inijBKM^Isti} 1 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



Shell .x 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




TALMAGE S NEW TABERNACLE, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 




Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. 



THE 



PALESTINE SERMONS 

OF 

REY. T. DE WITT TEMAGE, D. D. 

DELIVERED DURING HIS TOUR OF 

THE .". HOLY /. LAND, 

FOR HIS MILLIONS OF READERS AT 
HOME AND ABROAD, 

INCLUDING GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SACRED PLACES ; 
VIVID DELINEATIONS OF GOSPEL TRUTHS ; INTER- 
ESTING LOCAL REMINISCENCES ; AND VARIED 
MISCELLANY, AS INSPIRED BY 

HIS VISIT TO THE MANY PLACES MADE SACRED BY THE 

PERSONAL PRESENCE OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE 
- *B GREAT HOST OF BIBLICAL CHARACTERS. 



"Talk about questions of the day, there is but one question, and 
that is the Gospel. It can and will correct everything needing 
correction."— Gladstone's remark to Dr. Talmage at Ha warden. 



ILLUSTRATED. 



COPYKIGHT 1890. 

CHICAGO : 

RHODES & McCLURE PUBLISHING CO. 

1890. 




^Fi ^% 



PREFATORY LETTER. 



Constantinople, January, 1890. 

On leaving America I addressed some words of fare- 
well to my sermonic readers, and now, on my way 
home, I will write this letter of salution which will 
probably reach you about the Monday that will find 
me on the Atlantic ocean, from which I cannot reach 
you with the usual sermon. I have completed the 
journey of inspection for which I came. Others may 
write a life of Christ without seeing the Holy Land. 
I did not feel conpetent for such a work until I had 
seen with my own eyes the sacred places, and so I left 
home and church and native country for a more arduous 
undertaking. I have visited all the scenery connected 
with our Lord's history. The whole journey has been 
to me a surprise, an amazement, a grand rapture or a 
deep solemity. I have already sent to America my Holy 
Land observations for my Life of Christ, and they were 
written on horseback, on muleback, on camelback, on 
ship's deck, by dim candle in tent, in mud hovel of Arab 
village, amid the ruins of old cities, on Mount of Beati- 
tudes, on beach of Genesareth, but it will take twenty 
years of sermons to tell what I have seen and felt on 
this journey through Palestine and Syria. 

All things have combined to make our tour instructive 
and advantageous. The Atlantic, and Mediterranean, 
and Adriatic, Jjpgean, Dardanelles, and Marmora seas 
have treated us well. Since we left New York we have 
had but a half day and one night of storm, and that 
while crossing Mount Hermon. But let only those in 
robust health attempt to go the length of Palestine and 
Syria on horseback. I do not think it is because of the 
unhealthiness of climate in the Holy Land that so many 
(4) 



PREFATORY LETTER. 5 

have sickened and died here or afterward as a result of 
visiting these lands, but because of the fatigue of travel. 
The number of miles gives no indication of the exhaus- 
tion of the way, A hundred and fifty miles in Palestine 
and Syria on horseback demand as much physical 
strength as four hundred miles on horseback in regions 
of easy j ourney . 

Because of the near two months of bright sunlight by 
day and bright moonlight or starlight by night, the 
half day of storm was to us the more memorable. It 
was about noon of Dec. 18, that the tempest struck us 
and drenched the mountains. One of the horses falls 
and we halt amid a blinding rain. It is freezing cold. 
Fingers and feet like ice. Two hours and three-quarters 
before encampment. We ride on in silence, longing for 
the terminus of to-day's pilgrimage. It is, through the 
awful inclemency of the weather, the only dangerous 
day of the journey. Slip and slide and stumble and 
climb and descend we must, sometimes on the horse and 
sometimes off, until at last we halt in the hovel of a vil- 
lage, and instead of entering camp for the night we are 
glad to find this retreat from the storm. It is a house 
of one story, built out of mud. My room is covered 
with a roof of goats' hair. A feeble fire mid-floor, but 
no chimney. It is the best house of the village. Arabs, 
young and old, stand around in wonderment as to why 
we come. There is no window in the room, but two 
little openings, one over the door, the other in the wall, 
through which latter opening I occasionally find an 
Arab face thrust to see how I am progressing. But the 
door is open, so I have some light. 

This is an afternoon and night never to be forgotten 
for its exposures and acquaintance with the hardships 
of what an Arab considers luxurious apartment. I sat 



J 



6 PREFATORY LETTER. 

that night by a fire the smoke of which finding no ap- 
propriate place of exit took lodgement in my nostrils 
and eyes. For the first time in my life I realized that 
chimnies were luxury, but not a necessity. The only 
adornments in this room were representations of two 
tree branches in the mud of the -wall, a circle supposed 
to mean a star, a bottle hung from the ceiling, and 
about twelve indentations in the wall to be used as 
mantels for anything that may be placed there. This 
storm was not a surprise. Though pessimistic prophets 
we had expected that at this season we should have 
rain and snow and hail throughout our journey. For 
the most part it has been sunshine and tonic atmos- 
phere, and not a moment has our journey been hindered. 
Gratitude to God is with us the dominant emotion. 

Having visited the scenery connected 'with Christ's 
life, I was glad to close my journey by passing through 
the apostolic lands and seas. You can hardly imagine 
our feelings as we came in sight of Damascus, and on 
the very road where Saul was unhorsed at the flash of 
the supernal light. We did not want, like him, to be 
flung on the earth, but we did hope for some great 
spiritual blessing, brighter than any noonday sun, and 
a new preparation for usefulness. Our long horseback 
ride was ended, for a carriage met us some miles out 
and took us back to the city. The impression one 
receives as he rides along the walled gardens of the 
place are different from those produced by any other 
city. 

But we cannot describe our feelings as we entered the 
city about which we have heard and read so much, 
the oldest city under the sun, and founded by the grand- 
son of Noah; nor our emotions as we pass througk 
the street called "Straight," along which good Ananias 



PREFATORY LETTER. 7 

went to meet Saul, and by the site of the palace of 
Naaman, the leper, and saw the river Abana, as yester- 
day we saw Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus that 
Naaman preferred to wash in rather than the Jordan. 
Strange and unique Damascus! It is worth while to 
cross the Atlantic and Europe to see it. Though it has 
been the place of battle and massacre, and of ancient 
affluence and splendor as well as it is of present pros- 
perity, to me its chief attraction arises from the fact 
that here the scales fell from Paul's eyes, and that chief 
of apostles here began that mission which will not end 
until heaven is peopled with ransomed spirits. So also 
I saw day before yesterday Patmos, where John heard 
the trumpets, and the waves of the sea dashed to his 
feet, reminding him of the songs of heaven, ' 'like the 
voice of many waters." 

But this letter can only give a hint of the things we 
mean to tell you about when we get home, where we 
expect to be before this month is ended. I baptized by 
immersion in the Jordan an American whom we met, 
and who desired the solemn ordinance administered 
to him in the sacred waters. 

I rolled down from Mount Calvary or "place of a 
skull" a stone for the corner stone of our new Brooklyn 
Tabernacle. 

We bathed in the "Dead Sea" and in "Gideon's Foun- 
tain," where his three hundred men eagerly lapped 
the water from their hands as they passed through; 
and we sailed on Lake Galilee and stood on Mount 
Zion, and Mount Moriah, and Mount Hermon, and I 
saw the place where the shepherds heard the Christmas 
anthem the night Christ was born: and have been at 
Nazareth, and Capernaum, and sat by "Jacob's Well," 
and saw Tele-el-Kebir of modern battle, andMegiddo of 



8 PREFATORY LETTER. 

ancient battle, and where the Israelites crossed the des- 
ert, and slept at Bethel where one ladder was let down 
into Jacob's dream, but the night I slept there the 
heavens were full of ladders, first a ladder of clouds, 
then a ladder of stars, and all up and down the heavens 
were the angels of beauty, angels of consolation, angels 
of God ascending and descending; and I was on nearly all 
the fields of Herodic, and Solomonic, and Davidic, and 
Abrahamic history. 

I took Rome and Naples and Athens, and Alexandria 
and Cairo on the way out, and take the Greek Archipel- 
ago, and Constantinople, and Vienna on the way back. 
What more can God in his goodness grant me in the 
way of natural scenery, and classic association, and 
spiritual opportunity? Ah yes! I can think of some- 
thing gladder than that he can grant me. Safe return 
to the people of my beloved flock, the field of my work, 
and the land where my father died, and in the dust of 
whose valley I pray God I may be buried. 

T. De Witt Talmage. 





Hon. William E. Gladstone. 



DR. TftLITOE'S CM ON MR. GLADSTONE. 



"Pray come to Hawarden to-morrow," telegraphed 
Mr. Gladstone to Dr. Talmage, Jan. 23, 1890. The 
invitation was gladly accepted, and the reception given 
by the Ex Premier was very cordial. The two gentle- 
men had a long talk on religious and political questions. 
Mr. Gladstone said: 

"Talk about the questions of the day, there is but 
one question, and that is the Gospel. It can and will 
correct everything needing correction. All men at the 
head of great movements are Christian men. During 
the many years I was in the Cabinet I was brought into 
association with sixty master minds and all but five of 
them were Christians. My only hope for the world is 
in bringing the human mind into contact with divine 
revelation." Then placing his hand on Dr. Talmage's 
shoulder, Mr. Gladstone warmly eulogized the doctor's 
(9) 



10 GLADSTONE'S LETTER. 

Christian zeal and expressed his great gratification at 
the marvelous publicity given to his sermons, which 
are now distributed in all lands and read in all 
languages. 

After luncheon the two men linked arms and took a 
walk over Mr. Gladstone's vast estate, its proprietor 
commenting lovingly on its wonderful trees as though 
they were human beings. He then inquired eagerly if 
Americans paid proper attention to tree culture. 
Dr. Talmage asked Mr. Gladstone if the Irish home rule 
would be victorious. Gladstone brightened up and re- 
sponded emphatically; ' 'Yes when next election comes . ' ' 
He continued: " It seems to be a dispensation of God 
that I should be engaged in battle. At my time of life 
I should be resting. I never had any option in these 
matters. I dislike contests, but when Ireland, once 
the refuge of persecuted Englishmen, showed herself 
ready to adopt a righteous constitution and do her full 
duty, I hesitated not a monent to espouse her cause." 

Concerning America he said: "No one outside of the 
United States is bound to love it more than I." Point- 
ing to the numerous beautiful gifts from America he 
went on to say: ' 'Everywhere I have practical expres- 
sion of the tender though tfulness and kindness of the 
American people." 

Toward evening, when bidding Dr. Talmage farewell, 
Mr, Gladstone pressed into his hands some books and 
pamphlets containing autographic inscriptions, and also 
a copy of his own Latin rendering of his favorite hymn, 
"Rock of Ages," and said: "Give my highest regards 
to President Harrison and express to Mr. Blaine my 
deepest sympathy with him on account of the loss of 
his beloved son." 



CONTENTS. 



4 'Life's Great Voyage :" 
Off for the Holy Land, 
Paul as a Sailor, 
Ancient Navigation, 
Trampling the Billows, 
The Church is the Dry Dock, 
Love is the Helm, 
Hope is the Anchor, 
Faith is our Canvas' 
Prayer is the Rigging, 
The Bible is the Compass, 
Look out for Icebergs, 
Keep your Colors Up, 
Christ is the Pilot, 
Incidents, 

Once More I Confess My Faith, 
Good By. 

"A Mediterranean Voyage:" 

The Appian Way, 

Paul as a Signal Officer, 

An Excited Crew, 

An Awful Shipwreck, 

Tempters Are Not Helpers, 

Dangerous to Refuse Good Advice 

In a Cyclone on the Sea, 

We Expected to Die, 

The Terrified Passengers, 

Wild Cry of the Cyclone, 

My Dying Prayer, 

The Beautiful Morning, 

The Glorified Shore, 

"The Clouded Vision:" 

The Illustrious Paul, 

The Splendor of Ancient Corinth, 

Paul Addressed the Highest Culture, 

Our Dim Vision Will Grow Brighter, 

This is True of our Knowledge of God, 

And True of the Saviour's Excellency, 

(ii) 



12 



CONTENTS. 



God's Providences Not Fully Understood, 
Providential Hindrances in Life, 
How Many Shall Be Saved? 
A Glorious and Everlasting Reunion, 

"The Beloved Dorcas. " 

Dorcas and Napoleon, 

An Eloquent Tribute, 

Great Weeping in Joppa, 

The Apostle Peter Appears on the Scene, 

Dorcas the Disciple, . 

Dorcas the Benefactress, 

Queen Blanche and Queen Maud, 

Burial of Josephine of France, 

A Story of the Queen of England. 

"The Golden Age of Jerusalem' " 

Jerusalem .'—Its Mighty Past, 

Solomon's Splendors Portrayed, 

But Solomon is not Happy, 

Solomon's Riches, Wisdom and Wretchedness, 

The City of David — Sorrow For Absalom, 

The City of Great Temples, 

Christ's Triumphant Entry, 

Hosanna! Hosanna Cry the People, 

The Scene From Olivet, 

The City of Christ's Agony and Death. 

The Last Sad Hour, 

The New Jerusalem. . , 

"The Stormy Passage on Galilee," 

On the Banks of Galilee, 

A Beautiful Scene, 

On the Sea With Christ, 

Christ Stilling the Tempest, 

Have Christ on Your Ship, 

The Martyrs, 

Do Not be Frightened, 

A Good Story of John Livingston, 

Jesus is both God and Man, 

Christ Can Hush the Tempest, 

"A Marriage Feast. " 
The Wedding in Cana, 



109 
109 



CONTENTS. 



13 



The Miracle at the Wedding, 

The Wonderful Sympathy of Christ, 

The Abundance of Christ's Giving, 

Try to Make others Happy, 

Christ Favors the Luxuries of Life, 

Christ Does Not Deny us Joys, 

Christ With us in Our Extremity— A Story, 

Jesus Invites us to a Grander Wedding, 

"The Sky Anthem. " 

Christmas Eve in Palestine, 

Indigency Not Degredation, 

Duty and Blessing, 

Religion is Joyful, 

The Manger and Throne, 

The Double Mission of Christ, 

The Vision of Battles, , , 

A Touching Story, 

"The Half Not Told. , , 
The Two Circles, 
A Vision of Beauty, 
The Queen of Sheba, 
Women, Wealth and Religion, 
Earnestness in Search of Truth, 
Religion a Surprise, 
The Final Wonder, 

"Downfall of athaliah." 

A Word to Grandmothers, 

A Wife Steals a Child, 

Righteousness Cannot be Exterminated, 

Persecutions are Futile, 

Infidelity Fails to Annihilate, 

The Opportunities For Saving, 

Persons in Your Sunday School Class, 

How Phocus Dug His Grave and Died, 

The Church is a Good Hiding Place, 

Save Your Children, 

"Salvation By Faith." 
The Crash of Earthquakes, 
The Savior's Name, 
The Wondrous Death, 









110 




. Ill 




112 




. 114 






115 






. 116 






119 






. 120 






123 






. 123 






125 






. 126 






127 




. 128 


, 


130 




. 131 




134 




. 137 




137 




. 139 




140 




, 141 




142 




. 144 




146 






. 149 






149 






. 150 






152 






. 154 






154 






. 156 






158 






. 159 






160 






. 163 






167 






. 169 




170 








. 172 



14 



CONTEXTS. 



: ry of a Young Man, 
How to Trust Christ. 
Saving Faith. 
A Happy L 
A Peaceful Death, 

Eternity. 
A Mother's Story. 

'"The Name Of Jesus." 
An Easy Name, 
A Beautiful Name. 
A Mighty Name, 
A:: Bnduring Name. 
What Name Will You Call Christ ? 
:e this Day to Christ. 

'"The House ox the Wael. " 

A Sad House, 

Two Spies. 

The Scarlet Tta 

Stretch this Scarlet Cord, 

The First Step, 

Protect Your Household, 

My Good Mother, 

-rcarlet Line at the Window. 



173 
173 
17-i 
176 
176 

: - - 

179 

181 
182 
1S3 
186 

1S9 
192 

195 
196 
196 
198 
200 
201 
203 
204 
205 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Rev. T. De Witt Talmage D. D. , 


Frontispiece 


Talmage's New Church Building, 


1 


The Old World, .... 


16 


Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple, 


17 


Trampling the Billows, 


. 21 


Tarsus the Birth Place of Paul, 


30 


Tbe Storm, .... 


. 34 


Paul and Barnabas at Antioch; 


37 


The Golden Honr, 


. 44 


En Route, ..... 


46 


The Ascension, .... 


. 53 


Unibrgotten, ..... 


60 


The Flood, .... 


. 65 


Mary and Martha, .... 


69 


A Cathedral Interior, 


74 


Ancient Jerusalem, .... 


75 


Jerusalem, . . , . 


. 81 


The Royal Rride to Jerusalem, 


84 


The Mount of Olives, 


. 87 


Jesus Crossing Galilee and Stilling the Tempest, 


92 


Saved in the Ark, .... 


97 


The Peaceful Little Home, 


. 101 


Jesus Healing the Blind, 


105 


Tropical Climes, .... 


. 108 


Christ Turning the Water into Wine, 


109 


"Enough For Every Brow a Chaplet," 


. 113 


Sitting Under the Vine, 


118 


Song of the Angels, 


. 122 


The Star of Bethlehem, . 


123 


The Babe in the Manger, 


. 129 


War in Ancient Times, 


132 


Bethlehem, .... 


. 136 


Earnest Seekers, .... 


143 


Napoleon Witnessing the Burning of Moscow, 


. 148 


Arc de Triumph, Paris, 


149 


Paul Before the Council, . , 


. 153 


Love of Children, .... 


157 


Jesus and the Doctors in the Temple, 


. 161 


Fleeing For the City of Refuge, 


165 


Abraham Offering His Son Isaac, 


. 166 


The Transfiguration, 


167 


Of Such is the Kingdom, " 


. 180 


The Peaceful River, .... 


185 


Symbol of the New Dispensation, 


. 191 


Rahab Concealing the Spies, 


194 


The Plains of Jericho, 


. 199 


The River of the Water of Life, 


207 



(15) 



PALESTINE SERMONS 



T. De Witt Talmage, D. D. 

Delivered during his tour of 



THE 



HOLY .-. LAND. 




(JERUSALEM.) 

LIFE'S GREAT VOYAGE. 

[Delivered on board steamer "City of Paris," in New York harbor, October 
29, 1889.] 

"And they accompanied Him unto the ship.'" Acts xx, 38. 

OFF FOR THE HOLY LAND. 

jgptfO the more than 25,000,000 people in many 
countries to whom my sermons come week by 
week in English tongue and by translation, 
through the kindness of the newspaper press, I address 
these words. I dictate them to a stenographer on the 

(17) 






18 talmage's sermons. 

eve of my departure for the Holy land, Palestine. 
When you read this sermon I will be mid-atlantic. 

I go to be gone a few weeks on a religious journey. 
I go because I want for myself and hearers and 
readers to see Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and Jerusalem, 
and Calvary, and all the other places connected with 
the Savior's life and death, and so reinforce myself for 
sermons. I go also because I am writing the "Life of 
Christ," and can be more accurate and graphic when I 
have been an eye-witness of the sacred places. Pray 
for my successful journey and my safe return. 

I wish on the eve of my departure to pronounce a 
loving benediction upon all my friends in high places 
and low, upon congregations to whom my sermons are 
read in absence of pastors, upon groups gathered out 
on prairies and in mining districts, upon all sick and 
invalid and aged ones who cannot attend churches, but 
to whom I have long administered through the printed 
page. My next sermon will be addressed to you from 
Rome. I think I feel like Paul when he said: "So, as 
much as in me is , I am ready to preach the gospel to 
you that are at Rome also." 

PAUL AS A SAILOR. 

The fact is that Paul was ever moving about on land 
or sea. He was an old sailor — not from occupation, 
but from frequency of travel. I think he could have 
taken a vessel across the Mediterranean as well as 
some of the ship captains. The sailors never scoffed 
at him for being a "land lubber." If Paul's advice had 
been taken the crew would never have gone ashore at 
Melita. 

When the vessel went scudding under bare poles Paul 
was the only self-possessed man on board, and, turning 



life's great voyage. 19 

to the excited passengers, he exclaims in a voice that 
sounds above the thunder ofthe tempest and the wrath 
of the sea: "Be of good cheer." 

ANCIENT NAVIGATION. 

The men who now go to sea with maps, and charts, 
and modern compass, warned by buoys and light-house, 
know nothing of the perils of ancient navigation. 
Horace said that the man who first ventured on the 
sea must have had a heart bound with oak and triple 
brass. People then ventured only from headland to 
headland and from island to island, and not until long 
after spread their sail for a voyage across the sea. Be- 
fore starting the weather was watched, and the vessel 
having been hauled up on the shore the mariners placed 
their shoulders against the stern ofthe ship and heaved 
it off, they at the last moment leaping into it. Vessels 
were then chiefly ships of burden — the transit of pass- 
engers being the exception; for the world was not then 
migratory as in our day, when the first desire of a 
man in one place seems to be to go into another place. 
The ship from which Jonah was thrown overboard 
and in that which Paul was carried prisoner went out 
chiefly with the idea of taking a cargo. As now, so 
then, vessels were accustomed to carry a flag. In those 
times it was inscribed with the name of a heathen 
deity. A vessel bound for Syracuse had on it the in- 
scription " Castor and Pollux." 

The ships were provided with anchors. Anchors 
w r ere of two different kinds — those that were dropped 
into the sea and those that were thrown up onto the 
rocks to hold the vessel fast. This last kind was what 
Paul alluded to when he said: * 'Which hope we have 



20 talmage's sermons. 

as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and 
which entereth into that within the vail.' ' That was 
what the sailors call a ' 'hook anchor." The rocks and 
sand-bars, shoals and headlands, not being mapped out, 
vessels carried a plumb line. They would drop it and 
find the water fifty fathoms, and drop it again 
and find it forty fathoms, and drop it again and find 
it thirty fathoms, thus discovering their near approach 
to the shore. 

TRAMPLING THE BILLOWS. 

In the spring, summer, and autumn, the Mediterran- 
ean sea was white with the wings of ships, but at the 
first wintry blast they hied themselves to the nearest 
harbor, although now the world's commerce prospers 
in January as well as in June, and in mid-winter all 
over the wide and stormy deep there floats palaces of 
light, trampling the billows under foot and showering 
the sparks of terrible furnaces on the wild wind, and 
the Christian passenger, tippeted and shawled, sits 
under the shelter of the smoke-stack, looking off upon 
the phosphorescent deep, on which is written in scrolls 
of foam and fire: "Thy way, God, is in the sea and 
thy path in the great waters!" 

It is in those days of early navigation that I see a 
group of men, women, and children on the beach of the 
Mediterranean. Paul is about to leave the congrega- 
tion to whom he had preached and they are come down 
to see him off. It is a solemn thing to part. There 
are so many traps that wait for a man's feet. The 
solid ground may break through, and the sea — how 
many dark mysteries it hides in its bosom! A few 
counsels, a hasty good-by, a last look, and the ropes 
rattle, and the Scils are hoisted, and the planks are 



22 TALAi AGE'S SERMONS. 

hauled in, and Paul is gone. I expect to sail over some 
of the same waters over which Paul sailed, but before 
going I want to urge you all to embark for heaven. 

THE CHURCH IS THE DRY DOCK FOR REPAIRS. 

The church is the dry dock where souls are to be 
fitted out for heaven. In making a vessel for this voy- 
age the first need is sound timber. The floor timbers 
ought to be of solid stuff. For the want of it vessels 
that look able to run their jibbooms into the eye of any 
tempest when caught in a storm have been crushed like 
a wafer. The truths of God's word are what I mean 
by floor timbers. Away with your lighter materials. 
Nothing but oaks hewn in the forest of divine truth, 
are staunch enough for this craft. 

LOVE IS THE HELM. 

You must have love for a helm to guide and turn the 
craft. Neither pride nor ambition nor avarice will do 
for a rudder. Love, not only in the heart, but flash- 
ing in the eye and tingling in the hand — love married 
to work, which many look upon as so homely a bride — 
love, not like brooks, which foam and rattle, yet do 
nothing, but love like a river, that runs up the steps 
of mill-wheels and works in the harness of factory 
bands — love that will not pass by on the other side, 
but visits the man who fell among thieves near Jericho, 
not merely saying; ''Poor fellow! you are dreadfully 
hurt," but like the good Samaritan, pours in oil and 
wine and pays his board at the tavern. There must 
also be a prow, aranged to cut and override the bil- 
low. That is Christian perservance. There are three 
mountain surges that sometimes dash againist a soul 



life's great voyage. 23 

in a minute — the world, the flesh and the devil— and 
that is a well built prow that can bound over them. 
For lack of this many have put back and never started 
again. It is the broadside wave that so often sweeps 
the deck and fills the hatches, but that which strikes in 
front is harmless. Meet troubles courageously and 
3'ou surmount them. Stand on the prow, and as you 
wipe off the spray of the split surge, cry out with the 
apostle: "None of these things move me." Let all your 
fears stay aft. The right must conquer. Know that 
Moses, in an ark of bulrushes, can run down a war- 
steamer. 

THE ANCHOR IS HOPE. 

Have a good, strong anchor. "Which hope we have 
as an anchor." By this strong cable and windlass 
hold on to your anchor. "If any man sin we have 
an advocate with the father." Do not use the anchor 
wrongfully. Do not always stay in the same latitude 
and longitude. You will never ride up the harbor of 
eternal rest if you all the way drag your anchor. 

FAITH IS OUR CANVAS. 

But you must have sails. Vessels are not fit for the 
sea until they have the flying jib, the foresail, the top 
gallant, the skj^sail, the gaffsail, and other canvas. 
Faith is our canvas. Hoist it and the wands of heaven 
will drive you ahead. Sails made out of any other can- 
vas than faith will be split to tatters by the first 
northeaster. Strong faith never lost a battle. It will 
crush foes, blast rocks, quench lightnings, thrash moun- 
tains. It is a shield to the warrior, a crank to the 
most ponderous wheel, a lever to pry up pyramids, a 



24- talmage's sermons. 

drum whose beat gives strength to the heavenly sold- 
iery, and sails to waft ships laden with priceless pearls 
from the harbor of earth to the harbor of heaven. 

PRAYER THE RUNNING RIGGING. 

But you are not yet equipped. You must have what 
seamen call the running rigging. This comprises the 
ship's braces, halyards, clew-lines, and such like. With- 
out these the yards could not be braced, the sails lifted, 
or the canvas in anywise managed. We have prayer 
for the running rigging. Unless you understand this 
tackling you are not a spiritual seaman. By pulling on 
these ropes you hoist the sails of faith and turn them 
every whither. The prow of courage will not cut the 
wave nor the sail of faith spread and flap its wings un- 
less you have a strong prayer for a halyard. 

THE COMPASS IS THE BIBLE. 

One more arrangement and you will be ready for sea. 
You must have a compass — which is a bible. Look at 
it every day, and always sail by it, as its needle points 
toward the star of Bethehem. Through fog, and dark- 
ness, and storm it works faithfully. Search the script- 
ures. "Box the compass." 

Let me give you two or three rules for the voyage. 
Allow your appetites and passions only an under-deck 
passage. Do not allow them ever to come up on the 
promenade deck. Mortify your members which are up- 
on the earth. Never allow your lower nature anything 
better than a steerage passage. Let watchfulness walk 
the decks as an armed sentinel and shoot down with 
great promptness anything like a munity of riotous ap- 
petites. 



LIFE S GREAT VOYAGE. 25 

LOOKOUT FOR ICE-BERGS. 

Be sure to look out of the forecastle for icebergs. 
There are cold christians floating around in the church. 
The frigid-zone professors will sink you. Stear clear of 
icebergs. Keep a log-book during all the voyage — an 
account of how many furlongs you make a day. The 
merchant keeps a day-book as well as a ledger. You 
ought to know every night, as well as every year, how 
things are going. When the express train stops at the 
depot you hear a hammer sounding on the wheels, thus 
testing the safety of the rail train. Bound as we are 
with more than express speed toward a great eternity, 
ought we not often to try the work of self-examination? 

KEEP YOUR COLORS UP. 

Be sure to keep your colors up. You know the ships 
of England, Russia, France and Spain by the ensigns 
they carry. Sometimes it is a lion, sometimes an eagle, 
sometimes a star, sometimes a crown. Let it ever be 
known who you are and for what port you are bound. 
Let " Christian" be written on the very front, with a 
figure of a cross, a crown, and a dove, and from the 
masthead let float the streamers of Immanuel. Then 
the pirate vessels of temptation will pass you by un- 
harmed as they say: "There goes a Christian, bound 
for the port of heaven. We will not disturb her, for she 
has too many guns aboard." 

Run up your flag on this pully: "I am not ashamed 
of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God and 
the wisdom of God unto salvation." When driven 
back or laboring under great stress of weather — now 
changing from starboard tack to larboard, and then 



26 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

from larboard to starboard — look above the topgallants 
and your heart shall beat like a war-drum as the 
streamers float on the wind. The sign of the cross will 
make you patient and the crown will make you glad. 

CHRIST IS THE PILOT. 

Before you gain port you will smell the land breezes of 
heaven, and Christ the pilot, will meet you as you come 
into the narrows of death, and fasten to you, and say: 
"When thou passest through the waters I will be with 
thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow 
thee." Are you ready for such a voyage? Make up 
your minds. The gang-planks are lifting. The bell 
rings. All aboard for heaven! This world is not your 
rest. The chaffinch is the silliest bird in all the earth 
for trying to make its nest on the rocking billow. Oh, . 
how I wish that as I embark for the Holy land in the 
east, all to whom I preach by tongue or type would em- 
bark for heaven! What you all most need is God, and 
you need him now. Some of you I leave in trouble. 
Things are going very rough with you. You have had 
a hard struggle with poverty, or sickness, or persecu- 
tion, or bereavement. Light after light has gone out, 
and it is so dark that you can hardly see any blessing 
left. May that Jesus who comforted the widow of Nain 
and raised the deceased to life, with his gentle hand of 
sympathy wipe away your tears! All is well. 

INCIDENTS IN THE LIFE OP DAVID, JOB, 
ROSSINI AND WATTS. 

When David was fleeing through the wilderness pur- 
sued by his own son he was being prepared to become 
the sweet singer of Israel. The pit and the dungeon 



life's great voyage. 27 

were the best schools at which Joseph ever graduated. 
The hurricane that upset the tent and killed Job's child- 
ren prepared the man of Uz to write the magnificent 
poem that has astonished the ages. There is no way 
to get the wheat out of the straw but to thrash it. There 
is no way to purify the gold but to burn it. Look at 
the people who have always had it their own way. 
They are proud, discontented, useless, and unhappy. If 
you want to find cheerful folks go among those who 
have been purified by the fire. After Rossini had ren_ 
dered ''William Tell" the five hundreth time a company 
of musicians came under his window in Paris and sere- 
naded him. They put upon his brow a golden crown 
of laurel leaves. But amidst all the applause and en- 
thusiasm Rossini turned to a friend and said: "I would 
give all this brilliant scene for a few days of youth and 
lo ve. ' ' Contrast the melancholy feeling of Rossini, who 
had everything that this world could give him, to the 
joyful experience of Isaac Watts, whose misfortunes 
were innumerable, when he says: 

"The hill of Zion yields 

A thousand sacred sweets 
Before we reach the heavenly fields, 

Or walk the golden streets. 

Then let our songs abound, 

And every tear be dry; 
We're marching through Immanuers ground, 

To fairer worlds on high." 

It is prosperity that kills and trouble that saves. 
While the Israelites were on the march, amid great 
privations and hardships, they behaved well. After 
a while they prayed for meat, and the sky darkened 
with a large flock of quails, and these quails fell in great 
multitudes all about them; and the Israelites ate and 
ate and they stuffed themselves until they died. Oh! 



28 talmage's sermons. 

my friends, it is not hardship, or trial, or starvation 
that injures the soul, but abundant supply. It is not 
the vulture of trouble that eats up the Christian's life; 
it is the quails! it is the quails! 

ONCE MORE I CONFESS MY FAITH. 

I can not leave you until once more I confess my faith 
in the Savior whom I have preached. He is my all in 
all. I owe more to the grace of God than most men. 
With this ardent temperament if I had gone over-board 
I would have gone to the very depths. You know I can 
do nothing by halves: 

"Oh, to grace how great a debtor 
Daily I'm constrained to be!" 

I think all will be well. Do not be worried about me. 
I know that my Redeemer liveth, and if any fatality 
should befall me I think I should go straight. I have 
been most unworthy, and would be sorry to think 
that any one of my friends had been as unworthy a 
Christian as myself. But God has helped a great many 
through, and I hope he will help me through. It is a 
long account of shortcomings, but if he is going to rub 
any of it out I think he will rub it all out. And now 
give us (for I go not alone) your benediction. When 
you send letters to a friend in a distant land you say 
via such a city or via such a steamer. When you send 
your good wishes to us send them via the throne of 
God. We shall not travel out of the reach of your 
prayers: 

•'There is a scene where spirits blend, 
Where friend holds intercourse with friend; 
Though sundered far, by faith we meet 
Around one common mercy seat." 



life's great voyage. 29 

"GOOD-BY." 

And now, may the blessing of God come down upon 
your bodies and upon your souls, your fathers and 
mothers, your companions, your children your brothers 
and sisters, and your friends! May you be blessed in 
your business and in your pleasures, in your joys and 
in your sorrows, in the house and by the way! And 
if, during our separation, an arrow from the unseen 
world should strike any of us, may it only hasten on 
the raptures that God has prepared for those who love 
him! I utter not the word farewell; it is too sad, too 
formal a "word for me to speak or write. But, con- 
sidering that I have your hand tightly clasped in 
mine, I utter a kind, an affectionate, and a cheerful 
good-by! 




IN BRINDISI. 




A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 

[Delivered in Brindisi, an Italian port, Nov. 17, 1889.] 

"And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land." 

Acts xxvii, 44. 



THE APPIAN WAY— PAUL AS A 
OFFICER." 



'SIGNAL 



tAVING visited jour historical city, which we 
desired to see because it was the terminus of 
. the most famous road of the ages, the Roman 
Appian Way, and for its mighty fortress overshadow- 
ing a citv which even Hannibal's hosts could not 
(31) 



32 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

thunder down, we must to-morrow morning leave your 
harbor, and, after touching at Athens and Corinth, 
voyage about the Mediterranean to Alexandria, Egypt. 
I have been reading this morning in my New Testa- 
ment of a Mediterranean voyage in an Alexandrian 
ship. It was this very month of November. The ves- 
sel was lying in a port not very far from here. On board 
that vessel were two distinguished passengers: one, 
Josephus, the historian, as we have strong reasons to 
believe; the other, a convict, one Paul by name, who 
was going to prison for upsetting things, or, as they 
termed it, "turning the world upside down." This con- 
vict had gained the confidence of the captain. Indeed, 
I think that Paul knew almost as much about the sea 
as did the captain. He had been shipwrecked three 
times already; he had dwelt much of his life amidst 
capstans, andyardarms, and cables, and storms, and he 
knew what he was talking about. Seeing the equinoctial 
storm was coming, and perhaps noticing something un- 
sea worthy in the vessel, he advised the captain to stay 
in the harbor. But I heard the captain and the first 
mate talking together. They say: "We cannot afford 
to take the advice of this landsman and he a minister. 
He may be able to preach very well, but T don't believe 
he knows a marlinespike from a luff tackle. All aboard! 
Cast off! Shift the helm for headway! Who fears the 
Mediterranean? They had gone only a little way out 
when a whirlwind, called Euroclydon, made the torn 
sail its turban, shook the mast as you would brandish 
a spear, and tossed the hulk into the heavens. Over- 
board with the cargo! It is all washed with saltwater 
and worthless now, and there are no marine insurance 
companies. All hands, ahoy, and out with the an- 
chors ! 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 33 

AN EXCITED CREW. 

Great consternation comes on crew and passengers. 
The sea monsters snort in the foam, and the billows 
clap their hands in glee of destruction. In the lull of 
the storm I hear a chain clank. It is the chain of the 
great apostle as he walks the deck, or holds fast to the 
rigging amidst the lurching of the ship— the spray drip- 
ping from his long beard as he cries out to the crew: 
"Now I exhort you to be of good cheer, for there shall be 
no loss of any man's life among you, but of the ship. 
For there stood by me this night the angel of God, whose 
I am, and whom I serve, saying, fear not, Paul, thou 
must be brought before Caesar; and lo, God hath given 
thee all them that sail with thee." 

Fourteen days have passed and there is no abatement 
of the storm. It is midnight. Standing on the look- 
out, the man peers into the darkness, and, by a flash of 
lightning, sees the long white line of breakers, and 
knows they must be coming near to some country, and 
fears that in a few moments the vessel will be shivered 
on the rocks. 

AN AWFUL SHIPWRECK. 

The ship flies like chaff in the tornado. They drop the 
the sounding line, and by the light of the lantern they 
see it is t wen ty fathoms . Speeding along a little farther, 
they drop the line again, and by the light of the lantern 
they see it is fifteen fathoms. Two hundred and seven- 
ty-six souls within a few feet of awful shipwreck! The 
managers of the vessel, pretending they want to look 
over the side of the ship and undergird it, get into the 
small boat, expecting in it to escape; but Paul sees 
through the sham, and he tells them that if they go off 
3 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 35 

in the boat it will be the death of them. The vessel 
strikes! The planks spring! The timbers crack! The 
vessel parts in the thundering surge! Oh. what wild 
struggling for life! Here they leap from plank, to plank. 
Here they go under as if they would never rise, but, 
catching hold of a timber, come floating and panting 
©n it to the beach. Here, strong swimmers spread their 
arms through the waves until their chins plow the sand, 
and they rise up and wring out their wet locks on the 
beach. When the roll of the ship is called two hundred 
and seventy-six people answer to their names. "And 
so,', says my text, "it came to pass that they escaped 
all safe to land." I learn from this subject. 

TEMPTERS ARE NOT HELPERS. 

First, that those who get us into trouble will not stay 
to help us out. These shipmen got Paul out of Fair 
Havens into the storm.; but as soon as the tempest 
dropped upon them they wanted to go off in the small 
•oat, caring nothing what became of Paul and the pass- 
engers. Ah me! human nature is the same in all ages. 
They who get us into trouble never stop to help us out. 
They who tempt that young man into a life of dissipa- 
tion will be the first to laugh at his imbecility, and t* 
drop him out of decent society. Gamblers always make 
fun of the losses of gamblers. They who tempt you in 
to the contest with fists, saying, "I will back you," wiM 
be the first to run. Look over all the predicaments of 
your life, and count the names of those who have got 
you into those predicaments, and tell me the name of 
♦ne who ever helped you out. They were glad enougk 
to get you out from Fair Havens, but -when, with dam- 
aged rigging, you try to get into harbor, did they hold 



36 talmage's sermons. 

for you a plank or throw you a rope? Not one. Satan 
has got thousands of men into trouble, but he would 
not hide the goods or bail out the defendant. The spi- 
der shows the fly the way over the gossamer bridge into 
the cobweb; but it never shows the fly the way out of 
the cobweb over the gossamer bridge. I think that 
there were plenty of fast young men to help the prodi- 
gal spend his money; but when he had wasted his sub- 
stance in riotous living, they let him go to the swine 
pastures, while they betook themselves to some other 
new comer. They who take Paul out of Fair Havens 
will be of no help to him when he gets into the breakers 
of Melita. 

DANGEROUS TO REFUSE GOOD ADVICE. 

I remark again, as a lesson learned from the text, that 
it is dangerous to refuse the counsel of competent ad- 
visers. Paul told them not to go out with that ship. 
They thought he knew nothing about it. They said: 
' 'He is only a minister!" They went, and the ship was 
destroyed. There are a great many people who now 
say of ministers: " They know nothing about the world. 
They cannot talk to us!" Ah, my friends, it is not nec- 
essary to have the Asiatic cholera before you can give it 
medical treatment in others. It is not necessary to have 
your own arm broken before you can know how to 
splinter a fracture. And we "who stand in the pulpit, 
and in the office of a Christian teacher, know that there 
are certain styles of belief and certain kinds of behavior 
that will lead to destruction as certainly as Paul knew 
that if that ship went out Fair Havens it would go to 
destruction. "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; 
and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; 
but know thou that for all these things God will bring 



38 TAI,MAGE'S SERMONS. 

thee into judgment." We may not know much, but we 
know that. 

Young people refuse the advice of parents. They say: 
" Father is over-suspicious, and mother is getting old." 
But those parties have been on the sea of life. They 
know where the storms sleep, and during their voyage 
have seen a thousand battered hulks marking the place 
where beauty burned, and intellect foundered, and mor- 
ality sank. They are old sailors, having answered 
many a signal of distress and endured great stress of 
weather, and gone scudding under bare poles; and the 
old folks know what they are talking about. Look at 
that man — in his cheek the glow of internal fires. His 
eyes flash not as once with thought, but with low pas- 
sion. His brain is a sewer through which impurity 
floats, and his heart the trough in which lusts wallows 
and drinks. Men shudder as the leper passes, and par- 
ents cry, "Wolf! wolf!" Yet he once said the Lord's 
Prayer at his mother's knee, and against that iniqui- 
tous brow once pressed a pure mother's lip. But he re- 
fused her counsel. He went where euroclydons have 
their lair. He foundered on the sea, -while all hell echoed 
at the roar of the wreck: Lost Pacifies! Lost Pacifies! 
You have, my friends, had illustrations, in your own 
life, of how God delivers his people. I have had illus- 
trations in my own life of the same truth. 

IN A CYCLONE ON THE SEA. 

I was once in what on your Mediterranean you call a 
Euroclydon; but what on the Atlantic we call a cyclone, 
but the same storm. The steamer Greece of the Nation- 
al Line, swung out into the River Mersey at Liverpool, 
bound for New York. We had onboard seven hundred, 
crew and passengers. We came together strangers — 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 39 

Italians, Irishmen, Englishmen, Swedes, Norwegians, 
Americans. Two flags floated from the masts— British 
and American ensigns. We had a new vessel, or one so 
thoroughly remodeled that the vo\ r age had around it 
all the uncertainties of a trial trip. The steamer felt its 
way cautiously out into the sea. The pilot was dis- 
charged, and, committing ourselves to the care of him 
who holdeth the winds in his fists, we were fairly start- 
ed on our voyage of three thousand miles. It was 
rough nearly all the ay ay — the sea with strong buffeting 
disputing our path. But one night at 11 o'clock, after 
the lights had been put out, a cyclone — a wind just made 
to tear ships to pieces — caught us up in its clutches. 
It came down so suddenly that we had not time to 
take in the sails or to fasten the hatches. You may 
know that the bottom of the Atlantic is strewn with the 
ghastly work of cyclones. Oh! they are cruel winds. 

I thought that I had seen storms on the sea before; 
but all of them together might have come under one 
wing of that cyclone. We were onl3 r eight or nine hun- 
dred miles from home, and in high expectation of soon 
seeing our friends, for there was no one on board so 
poor as not to have a friend. But it seemed as if we 
were to be disappointed. 

WE EXPECTED TO DIE. 

The most of us expected then and there to die. There 
were none who made light of the peril, save two. One 
was an Englishman, and he was drunk, and the other 
was an American, and he was a fool! Oh! wat a time 
it was! A night to make one's hair to turn white. We 
came out of the berths and stood in the gangway, and 
looked into the steerage, and sat in the cabin. While 



-±0 talmage's sermons. 

seated there we heard overhead something like minute 
guns. It was the bursting of the sails. We held on 
with both hands to keep our places. Those who at- 
tempted to cross the floor came back bruised and gashed. 
Cups and glasses were dashed to fragments: pieces of 
the table getting loose, swung across the saloon. It 
seemed as if the hurricane took that great ship of thou- 
sands of tons and stood it on end and said: "Shall I 
sink it, or let go this once?" And then it came down 
with such force that the billows trampled over it, each 
mounted of a fury. We felt that everything depended 
on the propelling screw. If that stopped for an instant 
we knew the vessel would fall off into the trough of the 
sea and sink, and so we prayed that the screw, which 
three times since leaving Liverpool had already stopped, 
might not stop now. Oh! how anxiously we listened 
for the regular thump of the machine^, upon which 
our lives seemed to depend. After awhile some one 
said: "The screw is stopped!" No, its sound had only 
been overpowered by the uproar of the tempest, and we 
breathed easier again when we heard the regular pul- 
sation of the overtasked machinery going thump, thump, 
thump. 

THE TERRIFIED PASSENGERS. 

There were about five hundred and fifty passengers in 
the steerage, and as the water rushed in and touched 
the furnaces, and began violently to hiss, the poor 
creatures in the steerage imagined that the boilers were 
giving way. Those passengers writhed in the water 
and in the mud some praying, some crying, all terrified. 
They made a rush for the deck. An officer stood on 
deck and beat them back with blow after blow. It was 
necessary. They could not have stood an instant on 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 41 

the deck. Oh! how they begged to get out of the hold 
of the ship! One woman, withachild in her arms, rush- 
ed up and caught hold of one the officers and cried: "Do 
let me out! I cannot die here!" Some got down and 
prayed to the Virgin Mary, saying: " Oh blessed mother! 
keep us! Have mercy on us!" Some stood with white 
lips and fixed gaze, silent in their terror. Some "wrung 
their hands and cried out: "Oh God! What shall I do? 
What shall I do?" The time came when the crew could 
no longer stay on the deck, and the cry of the officers 
was: "Below! all hands below!" Our brave and sym- 
pathetic Captain Andrews — whose praise I shall not 
cease to speak while I live — had been swept by the 
hurricane from his bridge, and had escaped very nar- 
rowly with his life. 

WILD CRY OF THE CYCLONE. 

The cyclone seemed to stand on the deck, waving its 
wing, crying: "This ship is mine! I have captured it! 
Ha! Ha! I will command it! If God will permit I 
will sink it here and now. By a thousand shipwrecks, 
I swear the doom of this vessel!" There was a lull in 
the storm, but only that it might gain additional fury. 
Crash! went the lifeboat on one side. Crash! went 
the lifeboat on the other side. The great booms got 
loose, and, as with the heft of the thunderbolt, pounded 
the deck and beat the mast — the jibboom, studdingsail 
boom, and square sail boom, with their strong arms, 
beating time to the awful march and music of the 
hurricane. 

Meanwhile the ocean became phosphorescent. The 
whole scene looked like fire. The water dripping from 
the rigging, there were ropes of fire; and there were 
masts of fire; and there was a deck of fire. A ship of 



42 talmage's sermons. 

fire, sailing on a sea of fire, through a night of fire. 
May I never see anything like it again! Everybody 
prayed. A lad of twelve years of age got down and 
prayed for his mother. "If I should give up," he said, 
"I do not know what would become of mother." 
There were men also, I think had not prayed for 
thirty years, who then got down on their knees. When 
a man who has neglected God all his life feels that, he 
has come to his last time, it makes a very busy night. 
All of our sins and shortcomings passed through our 
minds. 

MY DYING PRAYER. 

My own life seemed utterly unsatisfactory. I could 
only say, "Here, Lord, take me as I am. I cannot 
mend matters now. Lord Jesus, thou didst die for the 
chief of sinners. That's me! It seems, Lord, as if my 
work is done, and poorly done, and upon thy infinite 
mercy I cast myself, and in this hour of shipwreck and 
darkness commit myself and her whom I hold by the 
hand to thee, Lord Jesus! praying that it may be a 
short struggle in the water, and that at the same in- 
stant we may both arrive in glory!" Oh! I tell you 
a man prays straight to the mark when he has a cy- 
clone above him, an ocean beneath him, and eternity 
so close to him that he can feel its breath on his cheek. 

The night was long. At last we saw the dawn, look- 
ing through the portholes. As in the olden time, in 
the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came walking on 
the sea, from wave cliff to wave cliff; and when he puts 
his foot upon a billow, though it may be tossed up 
with might, it goes down. He cried to the winds, 
Hush! They knew his voice. The waves knew his 
foot. They died away. And in the shining track of 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 43 

his feet I read these letters on scrolls of foam and fire, 
"The earth shall be filled with the knowledge of God as 
the waters cover the sea." 

THE BEAUTIFUL MORNING. 

The ocean calmed. The path of the steamer became 
more and more mild; until, on the last morning out, 
the sun threw around about us a glory such as I never 
witnessed before. God made a pavement of mosaic, 
reaching from horizon to horizon, for all the splendors 
of earth and heaven to walk upon — a pavement 
bright enough for the foot of a seraph — bright enough 
for the wheels of the archangel's chariot. As a parent 
embraces a child, and kisses away its grief, so over that 
sea that had been writhing in agony in the tempest, the 
morning threw its arms of beauty and of benediction, 
and the lips of earth and heaven met. 

As I came on deck — it was very early, and we were 
nearing the shore — I saw a few sails against the sky. 
They seemed like the spirits of the night walking the 
billows. I leaned over the tanrail of the vessel, and 
said, "Thy way, God, is in the sea, and thy path in 
the great waters." 

It grew lighter. The clouds were hung in purple 
clusters along the sky; and, as if those purple clusters 
were pressed into red wine and poured out upon the 
sea, every wave turned into crimson. Yonder, fire cleft 
stood opposit to fire cleft; and here, a cloud, rent and 
tinged with light, seemed like a palace, with flames 
bursting from the windows. The whole scene lighted 
up until it seemed as if the angels of God were ascending 
and descending upon stairs of fire, and the wavecrests, 
changed into jasper, and crystal, and ametlryst, as they 



A MEDITERRANEAN VOYAGE. 45 

were flung toward the beach, made me think of the 
crowns of heaven cast before the throne of the great 
Jehovah. I leaned over the taffrail again and said, 
with more emotion than before: "Thy way, God, is 
in the sea, and thy path in the great waters!', 

THE GLORIFIED SHORE. 

So, I thought, will be the going off of the storm and 
night of the Christian's night. The darkness will fold 
its tents and away! The golden feet of the rising morn 
will come skipping upon the mountains, and all the 
wrathful billows of the world's woe break into the 
splendor of eternal jov. And so we come into the harb- 
or. The cyclone behind us. Our friends all before us. 
God, who is always good, all around us. And if the 
roll of the crew and the passengers had been called, 
seven hundred souls would have answered to their 
names. "And so it came to pass that we all escaped 
safe to land." 

And may God grant that, when all our Sabbaths on 
earth are ended, we may find that, in the rich mercy of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, we all have weathered the gale!" 

Into the harbor of heaven now wc glide, 

Home at last! 
Softly we drift on the bright silver tide, 

Home at last! 
Glory to God! All our dangers are o'er; 
We stand secure on the glorified shore. 
Glory to God! We will shout evermore, 

Home at last! 

Home at last! 



¥ 



IN ATHENS. 




THE GLOUDED VISION. 

[Delivered in Athens, Greece, November 24, 1889.] 

"Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." I Cor., ii, 9. 

"For now we see through a glass darkly." I Cor., xiii, 12. 

THE ILLUSTRIOUS PAUL. 

*^T^J OTH these sentences were written by the most illus- 
Vftmk trious merely human being the world ever saw, 
^KJJK one who walked these streets, and preached 
from yonder pile of rocks, Mars Hill. Though more 
classic associations are connected with this city 
than with any city under the sun, because here 
Socrates, and Plato, and Aristotle, and Demosthenes, 
and Pericles, and Heroditus, and Pythagoras, 
and Xenophon, and Praxiteles wrote or chiseled, 
or taught or thundered or sung, yet in my mind 
all those men and their teachings were eclipsed by 
Paul and the Gospel he preached in this city and in your 
(47) 



48 talmage's sermons. 

nearby city of Corinth. Yesterday, standing on the old 
fortress at Corinth, the Acro-Corinthus, out from the 
ruins at is base arose in my imagination the old city, 
just as Paul saw it. 

THE SPLENDOR OF ANCIENT CORINTH. 

I have been told that, for splendor the world beholds 
no such wonder today as that ancient Corinth standing 
on an isthmus washed by two seas, the one sea bring- 
ing the commerce of Europe, the other sea bringing the 
commerce of Asia. From her wharves, in the construc- 
tion of which whole kingdoms had been absorbed, war 
galleys with three banks of oars pushed out and con- 
founded the navy yards of all the world. Huge handed 
machinery, such as modern invention cannot equal, lift- 
ed ships from the sea on one side and transported them 
on trucks across the isthmus and sat them down in the 
sea on the other side. The revenue officers of the city 
went down through the olive groves that lined the 
beach to collect a tariff from all nations. The mirth of 
all people sported in her Isthmain games, and the beauty 
of all lands sat in her theatres, walked her porticos and 
threw itself on the altar of her stupendous dissipations. 
Column, and statue, and temple bewildered the behold- 
er. There were white marble fountains, into which, 
from apertures at the side, there gushed waters every- 
where known for health giving qualities. Around these 
basins, twisted into wreaths of stone, there were all the 
beauties of sculpture and architecture; while standing, 
as if to guard the costly display, was a statue of Her- 
cules of burnished Corinthian brass. Vases of terra 
cotta adorned the cemeteries of the dead — vases so 
costly that Julius Caesar was not satisfied until he had 
captured them for Rome. Armed officials, the corinth- 



THE CLOUDED VISION. 49 

ian, paced up and down to see that no statue was de- 
faced, or pedestal overthrown, no bas-relief touched. 
From the edge of the city the hill held its magnificent 
burden of columns and towers and temples (l,000slaves 
waiting at one shrine), and a citadel so thoroughly im- 
pregnable that Gibraltar is a heap of sand compared 
with it. Amid all that strength and magnificence Co- 
rinth stood and defied the world. 

PAUL ADDRESSED THE HIGHEST CULTURE. 

Oh! it was not to rustics who had never seen anything 
grand that Paul uttered one of my texts. They had 
heard the best music that had come from the best in- 
struments in all the world; they had heard songs float- 
ing from morning porticos and melting in evening 
groves; they had past their whole lives among pictures 
and sculpture and architecture and Corinthian brass, 
which had been molded and shaped until there was no 
chariot wheel in which it had not sped, and no tower in 
which it had not glittered, and no gateway that it had 
not adorned. Ah, it was a bold thingfor Paul to stand 
there amid all that and say: i 'All this is nothing. These 
sounds that come from the temple of Neptune are not 
music compared with the harmonies of which I speak. 
These waters rushing in the basin of Pyrene are not 
pure. These statues of Bacchus and Mercury are not ex- 
quisite. Your citadel of Acro-Corinthus is not strong 
compared with that which I offer to the poorest slave 
that puts down his burden at that brazen gate. 
You Corinthians think this is a splendid city; you think 
you have heard all sweet sounds and seen all beautiful 
sights; but I tell you eye hath not seen nor ear heard, 
neither have entered into the heart of man, the things 
which God hath prepared for them that love him. In- 



50 talmage's sermons. 

deed both my texts, the one spoken by Paul and the one 
written by Paul, show us that we have very imperfect 
eyesight, and that our day of vision is yet to come: for 
now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to 
face. So Paul takes the responsibility of saying that 
even the Bible is an indistinct mirror, and that its mis- 
sion shall be finally suspended. 

I think there may be one Bible in heaven fastened to 
the throne. Just as now, in a museum, we have a lamp 
exhumed from Herculaneum or Nineveh, and we look 
at it with great interest and say: "How poor a light 
it must have given, compared with our modern lamps," 
so I think that this Bible, which was a lamp to our feet 
in this world, may lie near the throne of God, exciting 
our interest to all eternity by the contrast between its 
comparatively feeble light and the illumination of heav- 
en. The Bible, now, is the scaffolding to the rising 
temple, but when the building is done there will be no 
use for the scaffolding. 

OUR DIM VISION WILL GROW BRIGHTER. 

The idea I shall develope today is, that in this world 
our knowledge is comparatively dim and unsatisfac- 
tory, but nevertheless is introductory to grander and 
more complete vision. 

THIS IS TRUE OF OUR KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. 

This is eminently true in regard to our view of God. 
We hear so much about God that we conclude that we 
understand him. He is represented as having the tend- 
erness of a father, the firmness of a judge, the pomp of 
a king and the love of a mother. We hear about him, 
talk about him, write about him. We lisp his name in 
infancy, and it trembles on the tongue of the dying 



THE CLOUDED VISION. 51 

octogenarian. We think that we know very much 
about him. Take the attribute of mercy. Do we un- 
derstand it? The Bible blossoms all over with that 
word, mercy. It speaks again and again of the tender 
mercies of God, of the sure mercies, of the great mercies, 
of the mercies that endureth for ever, of the multitude 
of his mercies. And j^et I know that the views we have 
of this great being are most indefinite, one sided and 
incomplete. When, at death, the gates shall fly open, 
and we shall look directly npon him, how new and sur- 
prising. 

We see upon canvas a picture of the morning. We 
study the cloud in the sky, the dew upon the grass, and 
the husbandman on the way to the field. Beautiful 
picture of the morning! But we arise at daybreak, and 
go up on a hill to see for ourselves that which was rep- 
resented to us. While we look, the mountains are 
transfigured. The burnished gates of heaven swing 
open and shut, to let pass a host of fiery splendors. The 
clouds are abloom, and hang pendant from arbors of 
alabaster and amethyst. The "waters make pathway 
of inlaid pearl for the light to walk upon; and there is 
morning on the sea. The crags uncover their scarred 
visage; and there is morning among the mountains. 
Now you go home, and how tame your picture of the 
morning seems in contrast? Greater than that shall be 
the contrast between this scriptural view of God and 
that which we shall have when standing face to face. 
This is a picture of the morning; that will be the morn- 
ing itself. 

AND TRUE OF THE SAVIOUR'S EXCELLENCY. 

Again: My texts are true of the Saviour's excellency. 
By image, and sweet rhythm of expression, and start- 



52 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 

ling antitheses, Christ is set forth — his love, his compas- 
sion, his work, his life, his death, his resurrection. We 
are challenged to measure it, to compute it, to weigh it. 
In the hour of our broken enthrallment, we mount up 
into high experience of his love, and shout until the 
countenance glows, and the blood bounds, and the 
whole nature is exhilarated. "I have found him." And 
yet it is through a glass, darkly. We see not half of 
that compassionate face. We feel not half the warmth 
of that loving heart. We wait for death to let us rush 
into his outspread arms. Then we shall be face to face. 
Not shadow then, but substance. Not hope then, but 
the fulfilling of all prefigurement. That will be a mag- 
nificent unfolding. 

The rushing out in view of all hidden excellency; the 
coming again of a long-absent Jesus to meet us — not in 
rags and in penury and death, but amidst a light and 
pomp and outbursting joy such as none but a glorified 
intelligence could experience. Oh! to gaze full upon the 
brow that was lacerated, upon the side that was pierced, 
upon the feet that were nailed; to stand close up in the 
presence of him who prayed for us on the mountain, 
and thought of us by sea, and agonized for us in the 
garden, and died for us in horrible crucifixion; to feel 
of him, to embrace him, to take his hand, to kiss his 
feet, to run our fingers along the scars of ancient suffer- 
ing; to say: u This is my Jesus! He gave himself for me. 
I shall forever behold his glory. I shall eternally hear 
his voice. Lord Jesus, now I see thee. I behold where 
the blood started, where the tears coursed, where the 
face was distorted. I have waited for this hour. I shall 
never turn my back on thee. No more looking through 
imperfect glasses. No more studying thee in the darkness. 
But, as long as this throne stands, and this everlasting 




THE ASCENSION. 



(53) 



54 talmage's sermons. 

river flows, and those garlands bloom, and these arches 
of victory remain to greet home heaven's conquerors, 
so long I shall see thee, Jesus of my choice; Jesus of my 
song; Jesus of my triumph — forever and forever — face 
to face!" 

GOD'S PROVIDENCES NOT UNDERSTOOD FULLY 
NOW, BUT WILL BE HEREAFTER. 

The idea of my texts is just as true when applied to 
God's providence. Who has not come to some pass in 
life thoroughly inexplicable? You say: "What does this 
mean? What is God going to do with me now? He tells 
me that all things work together for good. This does 
not look like it." You continue to study the dispensa- 
tion, and after a while guess about what God means. 
"He means to teach me this. I think he means to teach 
me that. Perhaps it is to humble my pride. Perhaps 
it is to make me feel more dependent. Perhaps to teach 
me the uncertainty of life." But after all, it is only a 
guess— a looking through the glass, darkly. The Bible 
assures us there shall be a satisfactory unfolding. 
"What I do thouknowest not now; but thou shalt know 
hereafter." You will know why God took to himself 
that only child. Next door there was a household of 
seven children. Why not take one from that group, in- 
stead of your only one? Why single out the dwelling 
in which there was only one heart beating responsive 
to yours? Why did God give you a child at all, if he 
meant to take it away? Why fill the cup of your glad- 
ness brimming, if he meant to dash it down? Why al- 
low all the tendrils of your heart to wind around that 
object, and then, when every fiber of your own life 
seemed to be interlocked with the child's life, with strong 
hand to tear you apart, until you fall bleeding and 



THE CLOUDED VISION. 55 

crushed, your dwelling desolate, your hopes blasted, 
your heart broken? Do you suppose that God will ex- 
plain that? Yea. He will make it plainer than any 
mathematical problem — as plain as that two and two 
make four. In the light of the throne you will see that 
it was right — all right. ' 'Just and true are all thy ways , 
thou King of saints." 

PROVIDENTIAL HINDRANCES IN LIFE. 

Here is a man who cannot get on in the world. He 
always seems to buy at the wrong time and to sell at 
the worst disadvantage. He tries this enterprise, and 
fails; that business, and is disappointed. The man 
next door to him has a lucrative trade, but he lacks 
customers. A new prospect opens. His income is in- 
creased. But that year his family are sick; and the 
profits are expended in trying to cure the ailments. He 
gets a discouraged look. Becomes faithless as to suc- 
cess. Begins to expect disasters. Others wait for some- 
thing to turn up; he waits for it to turndown. Others, 
with only half as much education and character, get 
on twice as well. He sometimes guesses as to what it 
all means. He says: "Perhaps riches would spoil me. 
Perhaps poverty is necessary to keep me humble. Per- 
haps I might, if things were otherwise, be tempted into 
dissipations." But there is no complete solution of the 
mystery. He sees through a glass, darkly, and must 
wait for a higher unfolding. Will there be an explana- 
tion? Yes; God will take that man in the light of the 
throne, and say: "Child immortal, hear the explana- 
tion! You remember the failing of that great enterprise. 
This is the explanation." And you will answer: "It 
is all right!" 



56 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

I see, every day, profound mysteries of Providence. 
There is no question we ask oftener than Why? There 
are hundreds of graves that need to be explained. 
Hospitals for the blind and lame, asylums for the idiotic 
and insane, almshouses for the destitute, and a world 
of pain and misfortune that demand more than human 
solution. Ah! God will clear it all up. In the light 
that pours from the throne, no dark mystery can live. 

Things now utterly inscrutable will be illumined as 
plainly as if the answer were written on the jasper wall, 
or sounded in the temple anthem. Bartimeus will 
thank God that he was blind; and Lazarus that he was 
covered with sores; and Joseph that he was cast into 
the pit; and Daniel that he denned with lions; and 
Paul that he was humpbacked; and David that he was 
driven from Jerusalem; and the sewing-woman that 
she could only get a few pence for making a garment; 
and that invalid that for twenty years he could not 
lift his head from the pillow; and that widow that she 
had such hard work to earn bread for her children. 
You know that in a song different voices carry different 
parts. The sweet and overwhelming part of the hal- 
lelujah of heaven will not be- carried by those who rode 
in high places, and gave sumptuous entertainments; 
but pauper children will sing it, beggars will sing it, 
redeemed hod-carriers will sing it, those who were 
once the offscouring of earth will sing it. The hal- 
lelujah will be all the grander for the earth's weeping 
eyes, and aching heads, and exhausted hands, and 
scourged back, and martyred agonies. 

HOW MANY SHALL BE SAVED? 

Again: The thought of my texts is true when applied 
to the enjoyment of the righteous in heaven. I think 
we have but little idea of the number of the righteous 



THE CLOUDED VISION. b/ 

in heaven. Infidels say: "Your heaven will be a very 
small place compared with the world of the lost; for, 
according to your teaching, the majority of men will be 
destroyed." I deny the charge. I suppose that the 
multitude of the finally lost, as compared with the 
multitude of the finally saved, will be a hand full. I 
suppose that the few sick people in the hospitals of our 
great cities, as compared with the hundreds of thou- 
sands of well people, would not be smaller than the 
number of those who shall be cast out in suffering, 
compared with those who shall have upon them the 
health of heaven. For we are to remember that we are 
living in only the beginning of the Christian dispensa- 
tion, and that this whole world is to be populated and 
redeemed, and that ages of light and love are to flow- 
on. If this be so, the multitudes of the saved will be in 
vast majority. Take all the congregations that have 
assembled for worship throughout Christendom. Put 
them together, and they would make but a small audi- 
ence compared with the thousands and tens of thou- 
sands, and ten thousand times ten thousands, and the 
hundred and forty and four thousand that shall stand 
around the throne. Those flashed up to heaven in 
martyr fires; those tossed for many years upon the 
invalid couch; those fought in the armies of liberty 
and rose as they fell; those tumbled from high scaffold- 
ing or slipped from the mast, or were washed off into 
the sea. They came up from Corinth, from Laodicea, 
from the Red Sea bank and Gennesaret's wave, from 
Egyptian brick- yards, and Gideon's threshing floor. 
Those thousands of years ago slept the last sleep, and 
these are this moment having their eyes closed, and 
their limbs stretched out for the sepulcher. 
A general, expecting an attack from the enemy stands 



58 talmage's sermons. 

on a hill and looks through a field glass, and sees, in the 
great distance, multitudes approaching, but has no idea 
of their numbers. He says: "I cannot tell anything 
about them. I merely know that there are a great 
number." And so John, without attempting to count, 
says: ' 'A great multitude that no man can number." 
We are told that heaven is a place of happiness but 
what do we know about happiness? Happiness in this 
world is only a half fledged thing, flowery path, with 
a serpent hissing across it; a broken pitcher, from which 
the water has dropped before we could drink it; a thrill 
of exhilaration, followed by disastrous reactions. To 
help us understand the joy of heaven, the Bible takes 
us to a river. We stand on the grassy bank. We see 
the waters flow on with ceaseless wave. But the filth 
of the cities is emptied into it, and the banks are torn, 
and unhealthy exhalations spring up from it, and we 
fail to get an idea of the river of life in heaven. 

A GLORIOUS AND EVERLASTING REUNION. 

We get very imperfect ideas of the reunions of heaven. 
We think of some festal day on earth, when father and 
mother were yet living, and the children come home. 
A good time that! But it had this drawback— all were 
not there. That brother went off to sea, and never was 
heard from. That sister — did we not lay her away in 
the freshness of her young life, never more in this world 
to look upon her? Ah! there was a skeleton at the feast: 
and tears mingled with our laughter on that Christmas 
day. Not so with heaven's reunions. It will be an un- 
interrupted gladness. Many a Christian parent will 
look around and find all his children there. "Ah!" he 
says, "can it be possible that we are all here, life's perils 
over? The Jordan passed and not one wanting? Why, 



THE CLOUDED VISION. 59 

even the prodigal is here. I almost gave him up. How 
long he despised nry counsels! but grace hath triumphed. 
All here! all here! Tell the mighty joy through the city. 
Let the bells ring, and the angels mention it in their 
song. Wave it from the top of the walls. All here!" 

No more breaking of heart strings, but face to face. 
The orphans that were left poor, and in a merciless 
world, kicked and cuffed of many hardships, shall join 
their parents over whose graves they so long wept, and 
gaze into their glorified countenances forever, face to 
face. We may come up from different parts of the world, 
one from the land and another from the depths of the 
sea; from lives affluent and prosperous, or from scenes 
of ragged distress; but we shall all meet in rapture and 
jubilee, face to face. 

Many of our friends have entered on that joy. A few 
days ago they sat with us studying these gospel themes; 
but they only saw dimly — now revelation hath come. 
Your time will also come. God will not leave you 
floundering in the darkness. You stand wonder struck 
and amazed. You feel as if all the loveliness of life were 
dashed out. You stand gazing into the open chasm of 
the grave. Wait a little. In the presence of your de- 
parted and of him who carries them in his bosom, you 
shall soon stand face to face. Oh! that our last hour 
may kindle up with this promised joy! Ma}~ we be able 
to say, like the Christian not long ago, departing: 
''Though a pilgrim walking through the valley, the 
mountain tops are gleaming from peak to peak!" or, 
like my dear friend and brother, Alfred Cookman, who 
took his flight to the throne of God, saying in his last 
moment that which has already gone into Christian 
classics: "I am sweeping through the pearly gate, 
washed in the blood of the Lamb!" 




UlTtfQBGOTTEi;, 



IN JOPPA. 




THE BELOVED DORCAS. 

[Delivered in Joppa, Palestine, December 1st, 1889.] 

"And all the widows stood by him weeping, and showing the coats 
and garments which Dorcas made while she was with them." 

Acts ix, 39. 

DORCAS, JUDAS MACCABAEUS AND NAPOLEON. 

CHRISTIANS of Joppa! Impressed as I am with 

fyour mosque, the first I ever saw, and stirred as 
I am with the fact that your harbor once floated 
the great rafts of Lebanon cedar from which the temple 
at Jerusalem was builded, Solomon's oxen drawingthe 
logs through this very town on the way to Jerusalem, 
nothing can make me fcrget that this Joppa was the 
birthplace of the sewing society that has blessed the 
poor of all succeeding ages in all lands . The disasters to 
(61) 



62 talmage's sermons. 

your town when Judas Maccabasus set it on fire and 
Napoleon had 500 prisoners massacred in your neighbor- 
hood can not make me forget that one of the most mag- 
nificent charities of the centuries was started in this sea- 
port by Dorcas, a woman with her needle embroidering 
her name ineffaceably into the beneficence of the world. 

DORCAS HAS BEEN HERE-AN ELOQUENT 
TRIBUTE. 

I see her sitting in yonder home. In the doorway, 
and around about the building, and in the room where 
she sits are the pale faces of the poor. She listens to 
their plaint, she pities their woe, she makes garments 
for them, she adjusts the manufactured articles to suit 
the bent form of this invalid woman and to the cripple 
that comes crawling on his hands and knees. She gives 
a coat to this one, she gives sandals to that one. With 
the gifts she mingles prayers and tears and Christian en- 
couragement. Then she goes out to be greeted on the 
street corners by those whom she blessed and all through 
the street the cry is heard: " Dorcas is coming!" The 
sick look up gratefully in her face as she puts her hand 
on the burning brow, and the lost and the abandoned 
start up with hope as they hear her gentle voice, as 
though an angel had addressed them; and as she goes 
out the lane, eyes half put out with sin think they see a 
halo of light about her brow and a trail of glory in her 
pathway. That night a half-paid shipwright climbs 
the hill and reaches home and sees his little boy well 
clad and says: "Where did these clothes come from?" 
And they tell him, " Dorcas has been here." In another 
place a woman is trimming a lamp; Dorcas bought 
the oil. In another place a family that had not been at 
table for many a week are gathered now, for Dorcas 
has brought bread. 



THE BELOVED DORCAS. 63 

GREAT WEEPING IN JOPPA. 

But there is a sudden pause in that woman's ministry. 
They say: Where is Dorcas? Why we haven't seen 
her for many a day? Where is Dorcas? And one of 
these poor people goes up and knocks at the door and 
finds the mystery solved! All through the haunts of 
wretchedness, the news comes " Dorcas is sick!" No 
bulletin flashing from the palace gate, telling the stages 
of a king's disease, is more anxiously awaited than 
the news from this sick benefactress. Alas! forjoppa! 
there is wailing, wailing. That voice which has utter- 
ed so many cheerful words is hushed; that hand which 
has made so many garments for the poor is cold and 
still; the star which has. poured light into the midnight 
of wretchedness is dimmed by the blinding mists that 
go up from the river of death. In every God forsaken 
place in this town; wherever there is a sick child and 
no balm; wherever there is hunger and no bread; where- 
ever there is guilt and no commiseration; wherever 
there is a broken heart and no comfort, there are des- 
pairing looks and streaming eyes, and frantic gesticu- 
lations as they cry: " Dorcas is dead!" They send for 
the apostle Peter, who happens to be in the suburbs of 
this place, stopping with a tanner by the name of 
Simon. 

THE APOSTLE PETER APPEARS ON THE SCENE. 

Peter urges his way through the crowd around the 
door and stands in the presence of the dead. What 
expostulation and grief all about him! Here stand 
some of the poor people, who show the garments which 
this poor woman had made for them. Their grief can 
not be appeased. The apostle Peter wants to perform 



64 talmage's sermons. 

a miracle. He will not do it amid the excited crowd, 
so he kindly orders that the whole room be cleared. 
The door is shut against the populace. The apostle 
stands now with the dead. Oh, it is a serious moment, 
you know, when you are alone with a lifeless body! 
The apostle gets down on his knees and prays, and 
then he comes to the lifeless form of this one all ready 
for the sepulcher and in the strength of him who is the 
resurrection he exclaims : "Tabitha, arise!" There is 
a stir in the fountains of life; the heart flutters; the nerves 
thrill; the cheek flushes; the eye opens; she sits up! 

We see in this subject Dorcas the disciple, Dorcas the 
benefactress, Dorcas the lamented, Dorcas the resur- 
rected. 

DORCAS, THE DISCIPLE. 

If I had seen that word disciple in my text I would 
have known this woman was a Christian. Such music 
as that never came from a heart which is not chorded 
and strung by divine grace. Before I show you the 
needlework of this woman I want to show you her 
regenerated heart, the source of a pure life and of all 
christian charities. I wish that the wives and mothers 
and daughters and sisters of all the earth would imitate 
Dorcas in her discipleship. Before you cross the thres- 
hold of the hospital, before you enter upon the tempta- 
tions and trials of tomorrow, I charge }^ou, in the name 
of God and by the turmoil and tumult of the judgment 
day, O women! that you attend to the first, last, and 
greatest duty of your life — the seeking for God and 
being at peace with him. 

When the trumpet shall sound there will be an up- 
roar, and a wreck of mountain and continent, and no 
human arm can help you. Amid the rising of the dead, 



66 talmage's sermons. 

and amid the boiling of yonder sea, and amid the live, 
leaping thunders of the flying heavens, calm and j)laeid 
will be every woman's heart who hath put her trust in 
Christ; calm, notwithstanding all the tumult, as though 
the fire in the heavens were only the harmony of an 
orchestra, as though the awful voices of the sky were 
but a group of friends bursting through a gateway at 
eventime with laughter and shouting; " Dorcas, the 
disciple!" Would God that every Mary and every 
Martha would this day sit down at the feet of Jesus. 

DORCAS, THE BENEFACTRESS. 

Further, we see Dorcas the benefactress. History has 
told the story of the crown; the epic poet has sung of 
the sword; the pastoral poet, with his verses full of red- 
olence of clover tops, and a-rustle with the silk of the 
corn, has sung the praises of the plow. I tell you the 
praises of the needle. From the fig leaf robe prepared 
in the garden of Eden to the last stitch taken on the 
garment for the poor, the needle has wrought wonders 
of kindness, generosity, and benefaction. It adorned 
the girdle of the high priest; it fashioned the curtains of 
the ancient tabernacle; it cushioned the chariots of King 
Solomon; it provided the robes of Queen Elizabeth; and 
in the high places and in the low places, by the fire of 
the pioneer's back log and under the flash of the chan- 
delier, everywhere, it has clothed nakedness, it has 
preached the gospel, it has overcome hosts of penury 
and want with the war-cry of "Stitch, stitch, stitch!" 
The operatives have found a livelihood by it, and through 
it the mansions of the employer have been constructed. 
Amid the greatest triumphs of all ages and lands I set 
down the conquests of the needle. I admit its crimes; 
I admit its cruelties. It has had more martyrs than 



THE BELOVED DORCAS. 67 

the fire, it has punctured the eye, it has pierced the side, 
it has stuck weakness in the lungs, it has sent madness 
into the brain, it has filled potter's field, it has pitch- 
ed whole armies of the suffering into crime and wretch- 
edness and woe. But now that I am talking of Dorcas 
and her ministries to the poor, I shall speak only of the 
charities of the needie. 

This woman was a representative of all those women 
who make garments for the destitute, who knit socks 
for the barefooted, -who prepare bandages for the lacer- 
ated, who fix up boxes of clothing for missionaries, who 
go into the asylums of the suffering and destitute bear- 
ing that gospel which is sight for the blind and hearing 
for the deaf, and which makes the lame man leap like a 
hart and brings the dead to life, immortal health bound- 
ing in their pulses. What a contrast between the prac- 
tical benevolence of this woman and a great deal of the 
charity of this day! This woman did not spend her 
time idly planning how the poor of your city of Joppa 
were to be relieved; she took her needle and relieved 
them. She was not like those persons who sympathize 
with imaginary sorrows and go out in the street and 
laugh at the boy who has upset his basket of cold vit- 
uals, or like that charity which makes a rousing speech 
on the benevolent platform, and goes out to kick the 
beggar from the step, crying: "Hush your miserable 
howling!" 

The sufferers of the world want not so much theory 
as practice; not so much kind wishes as loaves of bread; 
not so much smiles as shoes; not so much "God bless 
yous!" as jackets and frocks. I will put one earnest 
Christian man, hard working, against 5,000 mere theo- 
rists on the subject of charity. There are a great many 
who have fine ideas about church architecture who never 



68 talmage's sermons. 

in their life helped to build a church. There are men 
who can give you the history of Buddhism and Moham- 
medanism who never sent a farthing for their evangel- 
ization. There are women who talk beautifully about 
the suffering of the world who never had the courage, 
like Dorcas, to take the needle and assault it. 

QUEEN BLANCHE, QUEEN MAUD AND OTHER 
BENEFACTRESSES. 

I am glad that there is not a page of the world's 
history which is not a record of female benevolence. 
God says to all lands and people, Come now and hear 
the widow's mite rattle down into the poor box. The 
princess of Counti sold all her jewels that she might 
help the famine-stricken. Queen Blanche, the "wife of 
Louis VIII. of France, hearing that there were some 
persons unjustly incarcerated in the prisons, went out 
amidst the rabble and took a stick and struck the door 
as a signal that they might all strike it, and down went 
the prison door, and out came the prisoners. Queen 
Maud< the wife of Henry L, went down amidst the poor 
and washed their sores and administered to them 
cordials. Mrs. Retson, at Matagorda, appeared on 
the battle-field while the missiles of death were flying 
around, and cared for the wounded. Is there a man or 
woman who has ever heard of the civil war in America 
who has not heard of the -women of the sanitary and 
Christian commissions, or the fact that before the smoke 
had gone up from Gettysbnrg and South Mountain the 
women of the north met the women of south on the bat- 
tle-field, forgetting all their animosities while they bound 
up the wounded and closed the eyes of the slain? Do rcas 
the benefactress. 

I come now to speak of Dorcas the lamented. When 



70 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

death struck down that good woman, oh, how much 
sorrow there was in this town of Joppa! I suppose 
there were women here with larger fortnnes; women, 
perhaps, with handsomer faces; but there was no grief 
at their departure like this at the death of Dorcas . There 
was not more turmoil and upturning in the Mediter- 
ranean sea, dashing against the wharves of this sea- 
port, then there were surgingsto and fro of grief because 
Dorcas was dead. There are a great many who go out 
of life and are unmissed. There may be a Yery large 
funeral; there may be a great many carriages and a 
plumed hearse; there may be high-sounding eulogiums; 
the bell may toll at the cemetery gate; there may be a 
very fine marble shaft reared over the resting place; 
but the whole thing may be a false-hood and a sham. 
The church of God has lost nothing, the world has lost 
nothing. It is only a nuisance abated; it is only a 
grumbler ceasing to find fault; it is only an idler 
stopped yawning; it is only a dissipated fashionable, 
parted from his wine cellar; while, on the other hand, 
no useful Christian leaves this world without being 
missed. The church of God cries out like the prophet: 
"Howl, fir tree, for the cedar has fallen." Widowhood 
comes and shows the garments which the departed had 
made. Orphans are lifted up to look into the calm 
face of the sleeping benefactress. Reclaimed vagrancy 
comes and kisses the cold brow of her who charmed it 
away from sin, and all through the streets of Joppa 
there is mourning — mourning because Dorcas is dead. 

BURIAL OF JOSEPHINE OF FRANCE. 

When Josephine of France was carried out to her 
grave there were a great many men and women of 
pomp and pride and position that went out after her; 



THE BELOVED DORCAS. 71 

but I am most affected by the story of history that on 
that day there were 10,000 of the poor of France who 
followed her coffin, weeping and wailing until the air 
rang again, because when they lost Josephine they lost 
their last earthly friend. Oh, who would not rather 
have such obsequies than all the tears that were ever 
poured in the lachrymals that have been exhumed from 
ancient cities. Theremay be no mass for the dead; there 
may be no costly sacrophagus; there may be no elabor- 
ate mausoleum; but in the damp cellars of the city and 
through the lonely huts of the mountain glen there will 
be mourning, mourning, mourning, because Dorcas is 
dead. "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they 
rest from their labors and their works do follow them." 

I speak to you of Dorcas the resurrected. The apostle 
came to where she "was and said: "Arise; and she sat 
up!" In what a short compass the writer put that — 
"She sat up!" Oh, what a time there must have been 
around this town "when the apostle brought her out 
among her old friends! How the tears of joy must 
have started! What clapping of hands there must 
have been! What singing! What laughter! Sound it 
all through that lane! Shout it down that dark alley! 
Let all Joppa hear it! Dorcas is resurrected! 

You and I have seen the same thing many a time; 
not a dead body resuscitated, but the deceased coming 
up again after death in the good accomplished. If a 
man labors up to fifty years of age, serving God, and 
then dies, we are apt to think that his earthly work is 
done. No. His influence on earth will continue till 
the world ceases. Services rendered for Christ never 
stops. A Christian woman toils for the upbuilding of a 
church through many anxieties, through many self 
denials, with prayers and tears, and then she dies. It 



72 TALMAGE's SERMONS. 

is fifteen years since she went away. Now the spirit of 
God descends upon the church; hundreds of souls stand 
up and confess the faith in Christ. Has that Christian 
woman who went away fifteen years ago nothing to 
do with these things? I see the flowering out of her 
noble heart. I hear the echo of her footsteps in all the 
songs over sin forgiven, in all the prosperity of the 
church. The good that seemed to be buried has come 
up again. Dorcas is resurrected. 

After awhile all these womanly friends of Christ will 
put down their needles forever. After making gar- 
ments for others some one will make a garment for 
them; the last robe we ever wear — the robe for the 
grave. You will have heard the last cry of pain. You 
will have witnessed the last orphanage. You will have 
come in worn out from your last round of mercy. I do 
not know where you will sleep nor what 3 r our epitaph 
will be; but there will be a lamp burning at that tomb 
and an angel of God guarding it, and through all the 
long night no rude foot will disturb the dust. Sleep on, 
sleep on! Soft bed, pleasant shadows, undisturbed re- 
pose! Sleep on! 

Asleep in Jesus! Blessed sleep! 
From which none ever wakes to weep. 

Then one day there will be a sky rending, and a whirl 
of wheels, and the flash of a pageant; armies marching, 
chains clanking, banners waving, thunders booming, 
and that Christian woman will arise from the dust, and 
she will be suddenly surrounded — surrounded by the 
wanderers of the street whom she reclaimed, surround- 
ed by the wounded souls to whom she had administered! 
Daughter of God, so strangely surrounded, what means 
this! It means that reward has come, that the victory 
is won, that the crown is ready, that the banquet is 
spread. Shout it through all the crumbling earth. 



THE BELOVED DORCAS. M 

Sing it through all the flying heavens. Dorcas is resur- 
rected. 

A STORY OP THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND. 
In 1885, when some of the soldiers came back from 
the Crimean war to London, the Queen of England dis- 
tributed among them beautiful medals, called Crimean 
medals. Galleries were erected for the two houses of 
parliament and the royal family to sit in. There was a 
great audience to witness the distribution of the med- 
als. A colonel who had lost both feet in the battle of 
Inkerman was pulled in on a wheel-chair; others came 
in limping on their crutches. Then the queen of Eng- 
land arose before them in the name of the government 
and uttered words of commendation to the officers and 
men and distributed these medals, inscribed with the 
four great battlefields — Alma, Balaklava, Inkerman, 
and Sebastopol. As the queen gave these to the wound- 
ed men and the wounded officers the bands of music 
struck up the national air and the people with stream- 
ing eyes joined in the song: 

God save our gracious queen! 
Long live our noble queen! 
God save the queen! 

And then they shouted, "Huzzah! huzzah!" Oh, it 
was a proud day for those returned warriors! 

But a brighter, better, and gladder day will come 
when Christ shall gather those who have toiled in his 
service, good soldiers of Jesus Christ. He shall rise be- 
fore them, and in the presence of all the glorified of 
heaven he will say: "Well done, good and faithful ser- 
vant!" and then he will distribute the medals of eternal 
victory, not inscribed with works of righteousness 
which we have done, but with those four great battle- 
fields, dear to earth and dear to heaven, Bethlehem! 
Nazareth! Gethsemane! Calvary! 



THE HOLY CITY. 




THE GOLDEN AGE OE JERUSALEM. 

[Delivered in Jerusalem, December 8, 1889.] 
"Jerusalem! Jerusalem!" Matt, xxiii, 37. 

JERUSALEM! JERUSALEM !— ITS MIGHTY PAST. 

(^T^HIS exclamation burst from Christ's lips as He 
B» came in sight of this great city, and although 
things have marvel ously changed, who can visit 
Jerusalem to-day without having its mighty past roll 
over on him, and ordinary utterance must give place 
for the exclamatory as we cry, O, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
Disappointed with the Holy Land many have been, 
(75) 






76 talmage's sermons. 

and I have heard good friends say that their ardor 
about sacred places had been so dampened that they 
were sorry they ever visited Jerusalem. But with me 
the city and its surroundings are a rapture, a solemnity 
an overwhelming emotion. 0! Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 
The procession of kings, conquerors, poets and immor- 
tal men and women pass before me as I stand here. 
Among the throng are Solomon David and Christ. 

SOLOMON'S SPLENDOR PORTRAYED. 

Yes, through these streets and amid these surround- 
ings rode Solomon, that wonder of splendor and wretch- 
edness. It seemed as if the world exhausted itself on 
that man. It wove its brightest flowers into his gar- 
land. It set its richest gems in his coronet. It pressed 
the rarest wine to his lips. It robed him in the purest 
purple and embroidery. It cheered him with the sweet- 
est music in that land of harps. It greeted him with 
the gladdest laughter that ever leaped from mirth's lip. 
It sprinkled his cheek with spray from the brightest 
fountains. Royalty had no dominion, wealth no luxury, 
gold no glitter, flowers no sweetness, song no melody, 
light no radiance, upholstery no gorgeousness, waters 
no gleam, birds no plumage, prancing coursers no met- 
tle, architecture no grandeur but it was all his. Across 
the thick grass of the lawn, fragrant with tufts of cam- 
phire from Engedi, fell the long shadows of trees brought 
from distant forests. 

Fish pools, fed by artificial channels that brought 
the streams from hills far away, were perpetually 
ruffled with fins, and golden scales shot from water 
cave to water cave with endless dive swirl, attracting 
the gaze of foreign potentates. Birds that had been 
brought from foreign aviaries glanced and fluttered 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 77 

among the foliage, and called to their mates far beyond 
the sea. From the royal stables there came up the 
neighing of twelve thousand horses, standing in blank- 
ets of Tyrian purple, chewing their bits over troughs 
of gold, waiting for the king's order to be brought out 
in front of the palace when the official dignitaries 
would leap into the saddle for some grand parade, or 
harnessed to some of the fourteen hundred chariots of 
the king, the fiery chargers with flaunting mane and 
throbbing nostril would make the earth jar with the 
tramp of hoofs and the thunder of wheels. While with- 
in and without the palace you could not think of a single 
luxury that could be added, or of a single splendor that 
could be kindled, down on the banks of the sea the dry 
docks of Ezion-geber rang with the hammers of the 
shipwrights who were constructing larger vessels for a 
still wider commerce, for all lands and climes were to 
be robbed to make up Solomon's glory. No rest till 
his keels shall cut every sea, his axmen hew every for- 
est, his archers strike every rare wing, his fishermen 
whip every stream, his merchants trade in every bazaar, 
his name be honored by every tribe; and royalty shall 
have no dominion, wealth no luxury, gold no glitter, 
song no melody, light no radiance, waters no gleam, 
birds no plumage, prancing coursers no mettle, uphol- 
stery no gorgeousness, architecture no grandeur, but it 
was all his. 

BUT SOLOMON IS NOT HAPPY. 

"Well," you say, "-if there is any man happy, he 
ought to be." But I hear him coming out through the 
palace, and see his robes actually incrusted with jewels, 
as he stands in the front and looks out upon the vast 
domain. What does he say? King Solomon, great is 



78 TALMAGE^S SERMONS. 

your dominion, great is your honor, great is your joy? 
No. While standing here amidst all the splendor, the 
tears start, and his heart breaks and he exclaims: 
"Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.' ' What! Solomon 
not happy yet? No, not happy. The honors and the 
emoluments of this world brings as many cares with 
them that they bring also torture and disquietude. 
Pharoah sits on one of the highest earthly eminences, 
yet he is miserable because there are some people in his 
realm that do not want any longer to make bricks. 
The head of Edward I. aches under his crown because 
the people will not pay the taxes, and Llewellyn, 
Prince of Wales, will not do him homage, and Wallace 
will be a hero. Frederick William III, of Prussia, is 
miserable because France wants to take the Prussian 
Provinces. The world is not large enough for Louis 
XIV and Willian III. The ghastliest suffering, the 
most shriveling fear, the most rendering jealousies, the 
most gigantic disquietude, have walked amidst obse- 
quious courtiers, and been clothed in royal apparel, 
and sat on judgment seats of power. 

Honor and truth and justice cannot go so high up in 
authority as to be beyond the range of human assault. 
The pure and good in all ages have been execrated by 
the mob who cry out: "Not this man, but Barabbas. 
Now, Barabbas was a robber." By honesty, by Chris- 
tian principle, I would have you seek for the favor and 
the confidence of your fellow men; but do not look 
upon some high position as though that were always 
sunshine. The mountains of earthly honor are like the 
mountains of Switzerland, covered with perpetual ice 
and snow. Having obtained the confidence and love 
of your associates, be content with such things as you 
have. You brought nothing into the world, and it is 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 79 

very certain you can carry nothing out. "Cease ye 
from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." There is an 
honor that is worth possessing, but it is an honor that 
comes from God. This day rise up and take it. "Behold 
what manner of love the father hath bestowed upon 
us, that we should be called the sons of God." Who 
aspires not for that royalty? Come now, and be kings 
and priests unto God and the lamb forever. 

If wealth and wisdom could have satisfied a man, 
Solomon would have been satisfied. To say that Solo- 
mon was a millionaire gives but a very imperfect idea 
of the propert}' he inherited from David, his father. 

SOLOMON'S RICHES, WISDOM AND WRETCH- 
EDNESS. 

He had at his command gold to the value of sis hun- 
dred and eighty millon pounds, and he had silver to the 
value of one billion, twenty -nine million, three hundred 
and seventy -seven pounds sterling. The queen of Sheba 
made him a nice little present of seven hundred and 
twenty thousand pounds, and Hiram made him a pres- 
ent of the same amount. If he had lost the value of 
a whole realm out of his pocket, it would hardly have 
been worth his while to stoop down and pick it up. 
He wrote one thousand and five songs. He wrote three 
thousand proverbs. He wrote about almost every- 
thing. The Bible says distinctly he wrote about plants, 
from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop that grow- 
ethoutofthe wall, and about birds and beasts and 
fishes. No doubt he put off his royal robes, and put on 
hunter's trapping, and went out with his arrows to 
bring down the rarest specimens of birds; and then 
with his fishing apparatus he went down to the stream 
to bring up the denizens of the deep, and plunged into 
the forest and found the rarest specimens of flowers 



80 talmage's sermons. 

and then he came back to his study and wrote books 
about zoolog}', the science of animals; about ichthyol- 
ogy, the science of fishes; about ornithology, the science 
of birds; about botany, the science of plants. Yet, not- 
withstanding all his wisdom and wealth, behold his 
wretchedness, and let him pass on. Did any other city 
ever behold so wonderful a man? Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 

THE CITY OF DAVID— SORROW FOR ABSALOM. 

But here passes through these streets, as in imagina- 
tion I see him, quite as wonderful and a far better man. 
David the conqueror, the king, the poet. Can it be that 
I am in the very city where he lived and reigned! David 
great for power, and great for grief. He was wrapped 
up in his boy Absalom. He was a splendid bo}^ judged 
by the rules of worldly criticism. From the crown of 
his head to the sole of his foot there was not a single 
blemish. The Bible says that he had such a luxuriant 
shock of hair that, when once a year it was shorn, 
what was cut off weighed over three pounds. But, not- 
withstanding all his brilliancy of appearance, he was a 
bad boy, and broke his father's heart. He was plotting 
to get the throne of Israel. He had marshalled an 
army to overthrow his father's government. The day 
of battle had come. The conflict was begun. David, 
the father, sat between the gates of the palace waiting 
for the tidings of the conflict. Oh, how rapidly his 
heart beat with emotion! Two great questions were 
to be decided; the safety of his boy, and the continu- 
ance of the throne of Israel. After awhile, a servant, 
standing on the top of the house, looks off, and he sees 
some one running. He is coming with great speed, and 
the man on top of the house announces the coming of 
the messenger, and the father watches and waits, and 




ott, Jerusalem! Jerusalem! 



(81) 



82 talmage's sermons. 

as soon as the messenger from the field of battle comes 
within hailing distance the father cries out. Is it a 
question in regard to the establishment of his throne? 
Does he say: "Have the armies of Israel been victor- 
ious? Am I to continue in my imperial authority? 
Have I overthrown my enemies?" Oh, no. There is 
one question that springs from his heart to his lip, and 
springs from the lip into the ear of the besweated and 
bedusted messenger flying from the battlefield — the 
question: ' 'Is the young man Absalom safe!" When it 
was told to David, the king, that, though his armies 
had been victorions, his son had been slain, the father 
turned his back upon the congratulations of the nation, 
and went up the stairs of his palace, his heart breaking 
as he went, wringing his hands sometimes, and then 
again pressing them against his temples as though he 
would press them in, crying: "0 Absalom! my son! my 
son! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom! my 
son! my son!" Stupendous grief of David resounding 
through all succeeding ages. This was the city that 
heard the woe. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 

THE CITY OF GREAT TEMPLES. 

I am also thrilled and overpowered with the rememb- 
rance that yonder, where now stands a Mohammedan 
mosque, stood the temple, the very one that Christ vis- 
ited. Solomon's temple had stood there, but Nebuchad- 
nezzar thundered it down. Zerubbabel's temple had 
stood there, but that had been prostrated! Then Herod 
built a temple because he was fond of great architecture, 
and he wanted the preceding temples to seem insigni- 
ficant. Put eight or ten modern cathedrals together, 
and they would not equal that structure. It covered 
nineteen acres. There were marble pillars supporting 
roofs of cedar, and silver tables on which stood golden 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 83 

cups, and there were carvings exquisite and inscriptions 
resplendent, glittering balustrades and ornamented 
gateways. The building of this temple kept ten thou- 
sand workmen busy forty -six years. Stupendous 
pile of pomp and magnificence! But the material and 
architectural grandeur of the building were very tame 
compared with the spiritual meaning of its altars and 
holy of holies, and the overwhelming significance of its 
ceremonies . Jerusalem , Jerusalem! 

CHRIST'S TRIUMPHAL ENTRY. 
But standing in this old city all other facts are eclipsed 
when we think that near here our blessed Lord was 
born, that up and down the streets of this city he walk- 
ed, and that in the outskirts of it he died. Here was 
his only day of trimph and his assassination. One day 
this old Jerusalem is at the tiptop of excitement. Christ 
has been doing some remarkable works and asserting 
very high authority. The police court has issued pa- 
pers for his arrest; for this thing must be stopped, as 
the very government is imperiled. News comes that 
last night this stranger arrived at a suburban village 
and that he is stopping at the house of a man whom 
he had resuscitated after four days sepulture. Well, the 
people rush out into the streets, some with the idea of 
helping in the arrest of this stranger when he arrives, 
and others expecting that on the morrow he will come 
into the town and by some supernatural force oust the 
municipal and royal authorities and take everything in 
his own hands. They pour out of the city gates until 
the procession reaches to the village. They come all 
around about the house where the stranger is stopping, 
and peer into the doors and windows that they may 
get one glimpse of him or hear the hum of his voice. 
The police dare not make the arrest, because he has 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 85 

•somehow won the affections of all the people. Oh; it is 
a lively night in j^onder Bethany! The heretofore quiet 
village is filled with uproar, and outcry and loud dis- 
cussion about the strange acting countryman. I do not 
think there was any sleep in that house that night 
where the stranger was stopping. Although he came 
in wearc he finds no rest, though for once in his life- 
time he had a pillow. But the morning dawns, the olive 
gardens wave in the light, all along yonder road, reach- 
ing the top of Olive, toward this city, there is a vast 
swaying crowd of wondering people. The excitement 
around the door of the cottage is wild as the stranger 
steps out besides an unbroken colt that had never been 
mounted, and after his friends had strewn their gar- 
ments on the beast for a saddle the Saviour mounts it, 
and the populace, excited and shouting and feverish, 
push on back toward this city of Jerusalem. 

"HOSANNA! HOSANNA!" CRY THE PEOPLE. 

Let none jeer now or scoff at this rider; or the popu- 
lace will trample him under foot in an instant. There 
is one long shout of two miles, and as far as the eye can 
reach you see wavings of demonstrations and approval. 
There was something in the rider's visage, something in 
his majestic brow, something in his princely behavior, 
that stirs up the enthusiasm of the people. They run 
up against the beast and try to pull the rider off intc 
their arms and carry on their shoulders the illustrious 
stranger. The populace are so excited that they hardly 
know what to do with themselves, and some rush up 
to the roadside trees and wrench off branches and throw 
them in his way; and others doff their garments, what 
though they be new and costly, and spread them for a 
carpet for the conquerer to ride over. "Hosanna!" cry 



86 talmage's sermons. 

the people at the foot of the hill. "Hosanna!" cry the 
people all up and down the mountain. 

THE SCENE FROM OLIVET. 

The procession has now come to the brow of yonder 
Olivet. Magnificent prospect reaching out in every 
direction — vineyards, olive groves, jutting rock, silvery 
Siloam, and above all, rising on its throne of hills, this 
most highly honored city of all the earth, Jerusalem. 
Christ there, in the midst of the procession, looks off 
and sees here fortressed gates, and yonder the circling 
wall, and here the towers blazing in the sun, Phasaelus 
and Mariamme. Yonder is Hippicus, the king's castle. 
Looking along in the range of the larger branch of that 
olive tree, you see the mansions of the merchant princes. 
Through this cleft in the limestone rock you see the palace 
of the richest trafficker in all the earth. He has made 
his money by selling Tyrian purple. Behold now the 
temple! Clouds of smoke lifting from the shimmering 
roof, -while the building rises up beautiful, grand, ma- 
jestic, the architectural skill and glory of the earth lift- 
ing themselves there in one triumphant doxology, the 
frozen prayer of all nations. The crowd looked around 
to see exhilaration and transport in the face of Christ. 
Oh, no! Out from amid the gates, and the domes, and 
the palaces, there arose a vision of the city's sin, and of 
this citiy's doom, which obliterated the landscape from 
horizon to horizon, and he burst into tears, crying; 
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem!" But that was the only day 
of pomp that Jesus saw in and around this city. Yet 
he walked the streets of this city the lovliest and most 
majestic being that the world ever saw or ever will see. 

A ROMAN LETTER DESCRIBING JESUS. 
Publius Lentilus, in a letter to the Roman senate, de- 







! . 



88 talmage's sermons. 

scribes him as "a man of stature somewhat tall, his 
hair the color of a chestnut fully ripe, plain to the ears, 
whence downward it is more orient, curling and waving 
about the shoulders; in the midst of his forehead is a 
stream, or partition of his hair; forehead plain, and 
very delicate: his face without a spot or a wrinkle, a 
lovely red; his nose and mouth so forked as nothing 
can be represented; his beard thick, in color like his 
hair — not very long; his eyes gray, quick and clear." 

THE CITY OF CHRIST'S AGONY AND DEATH! 

He must die. The French army in Italy found a brass 
plate on which wasa copy of his death warrant, signed 
by John Ferubbabel, Raphael Robani, Daniel Roban 
and Capet. Sometimes men on the way to the scaffold 
have been rescued by the mob. No such attempt was 
made in this case, for the mob were against him. From 
nine in the morning, until three in the afternoon, 
Jesus hung a-dying in the outskirts of this city. It 
was the scene of blood. We are so constituted 
that nothing is so exciting as blood. It is not 
the child's cry in the street that arouses you as the 
crimson dripping from his lip. In the dark hall, seeing 
the finger marks of blood on the plastering, you cry: 
"What terrible deed has been done here?" Looking up- 
on this suspended victim of the cross, we thrill wdth the 
sight of blood — blood dripping from thorn and nail, 
blood rushing upon his cheek, blood saturating his gar- 
ments, blood gathered in a pool beneath. It is called 
an honor to have in one's veins the blood of the house 
of Stuart, or of the house of Hapsburg. Is it nothing 
when I point you to the outpouring blood of the king 
of the universe? 

In England the name of Henry was so great that its 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 89 

honors were divided among different reigns. It 'was 
Henry the First, and Henry the Second, and Henry the 
Third, and Henry the Fourth, and Henry the Fifth. In 
France the name of Louis was so favorably regarded 
that it was Louis the First, Louis the Second, Louis 
the Third, and so on. But the king who walked these 
streets was Christ the First, and Christ the Last, and 
Christ the Only. He reigned before the czar mounted 
the throne of Russia, or the throne of Austria was ti- 
tled, "king eternal, immortal." Through indulgences of 
the royal family, the physical life degenerates, and some 
of the kings have been almost imbecile, and their bodies 
weak, and their blood thin and watery: But the crim- 
son life that flowed upon Calvary had in it the health 
of immortal God. 

THE LAST SAD HOUR. 

Tell it now to all the earth, and to all the heavens — 
Jesus, our king, is sick with his last sickness. Let 
couriers carry the swift dispach. His pains are worst; 
he is breathing a last groan; through his body quivers 
the last anguish; the king is dying; the king is dead! 

It is royal blood. It is said that some religionists 
make too much of the humanity of Christ. I respond 
that we make too little. If some Roman surgeon, stand- 
ing under the cross, had caught one drop of the blood 
on his hand and analyzed it, it wonld have been found 
to have the same plasma, the same disk, the same 
fibrin, the same albumen. It was unmistakably human 
blood. It is a man that hangs there. His bones are of 
the same material as ours. If it were an angel being 
despoiled I would not feel it so much, for it belongs to a 
different order of beings. But my Savoir is a man, and 
my whole sympathy is aroused. I can imagine how 
i;he spikes felt— how hot the temples burned — what 



90 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 

deadly sickness seized his heart — how mountain, and 
city, and mob swam away from his dying vision — 
something of the meaning of that cry for help that 
makes the blood of all the ages curdle with horror: 
''My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?" 

Forever with all these scenes of a Savior's suffering 
will this city be associeted. Here his unjust trial and 
here his death. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! 

THE NEW JERUSALEM. 

But finally I am thrilled with the fact that this city 
is a symbol of heaven which is only another Jerusalem. 
"The New Jerusalem!" And this thought has kindled 
the imagination of all the sacred poets. I am glad that 
Horatio Bonar the Scotch hymnist rummaged among 
old manuscripts of the British museum until he found 
that hymn in ancient spelling, parts of which we have 
in mutilated form in our modern hymn books, but the 
quaint power of which we do not get in our modern 
versions: 

Hierusalem, my happy home! 

When shall I come to thee? 
When shall my sorrows have an end, 

Thy joys when shall I see? 
Noe dampish mist is seene in thee, 

Noe colde nor darksome night : 
There everie soule shines as the sunne, 

There God himselfe gives light. 

Thy walls are made of peetious stones, 

Thy bulwarkes diamondes square ; 
Thy gates are of right orient pearle, 

Exceedinge riche and rare, 

Thy turrettes and thy pinnacles 

With carbuncles doe shine ; 
Thy verrie streets are paved with gould, 

Surpassinge ckare and fine. 



THE GOLDEN AGE. 91 

Thy houses are of yvorie, 

Thy windows crystal cleare; 
Thy tj'les are made of beaten gould, 

God ! that I were there. 

Our sweet e is mixt with bitter gaule, 

Our pleasure is but paine ; 
Our joyes scarce last the lookeing on. 

Our sorrowes stille remaine. 

But there they live in such delight, 

Such pleasures and such pla3 r , 
As that to them a thousand yeares 

Doth seem as yesterday. 

Thy gardens and tlry gallant walkes 

Continually are greene; 
There grow such sweete and pleasant flowers 

As no where else are seene. 

There trees for evermore beare fruite 

And evermore doe springe ; 
There evermore the angels sit, 

And evermore doe singe. 

Hierusalem ! my happie home ! 

Would God I were in thee ! 
Would God my woes were at an end, 

Thy joyese that I might see ! 





JESUS CROSSING GALILEE, AND STILLING THE TEMPEST. 



IN CAPERNAUM. 




THE STORMY PASSAGE ON GALILEE- 

[Delivered in Capernaum, Palestine, December, 15, 1890.] 

" And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Caperna- 
um." John vi, 17. 

"And He arose and rebuked the wind" Mark iv:39 

ON THE BANKS OF GALILEE. 

tERE in this seashore village was the temporary 
home of that Christ who for the most of his life 
, was homeless. On the site of this village, now 
in ruins, and all around this lake, what scenes of kind- 
ness, and power, and glory, and pathos when our Lord 
lived here! It has been the wish of my life — I cannot 
say the hope, for I never expected the privilege — to stand 
on the banks of Galilee. What a solemnity and what a 
rapture to be here! I can now understand the feeling 
of the immortal Scotchman, Robert McCheyne, when, 
sitting on the banks of this lake, he wrote: 
(93) 



94 talmage's sermons. 

"It is not that the wild gazelle 

Conies down to drink thy tide, 
But he that was pierced to save from hell 

Oft wandered by thy side. 
Graceful around thee the mountains meet, 

Thou calm reposing sea; 
But ah! far more, the beautiful feet 

Of Jesus walked o'er thee." 

I can now easily understand from the contour of the 
country that bounds this lake that storms were easily 
tempted to make these waters their play-ground. From 
the gentle way this lake treated our. boats when we 
sailed on it yesterday one would have thought it incap- 
able of a paroxysm of rage, but it was quite different 
on both the occasions spoken of in my two texts. 

A BEAUTIFUL SCENE. 

I close my eyes, and the shore of Lake Galilee as it 
now is, with but little signs of human life, disappears, 
and there comes back to my vision the lake as it was in 
Christ's time. It lay in a sense of great luxuriance; the 
surrounding hills, terraced, sloped, grooved, so many 
hanging gardens of beauty. On the shore "were castles, 
armed towers, Roman baths, every thing attractive and 
beautiful — all styles of vegetation in shorter space tham 
in almost any other space in all the world, from the 
palm-tree of the forest, to the trees of rigorous climate. 

It seemed as if the Lord had launched one wave of 
beauty on all the scene, and it hung and swung from 
rock and hill and oleander. Roman gentlemen in pleas- 
ure-boats sailing this lake and countrymen in fish-smacks 
coming down to drop their nets pass each other with 
nod, and shout, and laughter, or swinging idly at their 
mooring. Oh, what a beautiful scene! It seems as if 
we shall have a quiet night. Not a leaf winked in the 



THE STORMY PASSAGE. 95 

air; not a ripple disturbed the face of Gennesaret, but 
there seems to be a little excitement up the beach and 
we hasten to see what it is and we find it is an embark- 
ation. 

ON THE SEA WITH CHRIST. 

From the western shore a flotilla pushed out; not a 
squadron, or deadly armament, nor clipper with valuable 
merchandise, nor piratic vessel ready to destroy every- 
thing they could seize, but a flotilla bearing messengers 
of light, and life, and peace. Christ is in the front of 
the boat. His disciples are in a smaller boat. Jesus, 
weary with much speaking to large multitudes, is put 
into somnolence by the rocking of the waves. If there 
was any motion at all the ship was easily righted; if 
the wind passed from starboard to larboard or from 
larboard to starboard the boat would rock, and by 
the gentleness of the motion putting the master asleep. 
And they extemporized a pillow made out of a fisherman's 
coat. I think no sooner is Christ prostrate and his head 
touched the pillow than he is sound asleep. The breezes 
of the lake run their fingers through the locks of the 
worn sleeper and the boat rises and falls like a sleeping 
child on the bosom of a sleeping mother. 

Calm night, starry night, beautiful night. Run up 
all the sails, ply all the oars, and let the large boat and 
the small boat glide over the gentle Gennesaret. But 
the sailors say there is going to be a change of weather. 
And even the passengers can hear the moaning of the 
storm as it comes on with great stride and all the ter- 
rors of hurricane and darkness . The large boat trembles 
like a deer at bay among the clangor of the hounds; 
great patches of foam are flung into the air; the sails 
of the vessel loosen, and the sharp winds crack like 



96 talmage's sermons. 

pistols; the smaller boats like petrels poise on the cliffs 
of the waves and then plunge. 

CHRIST STILLING THE TEMPEST. 

Overboard go cargo, tackling, and masts, and the 
drenched disciples rush into the back part of the boat 
and lay hold of Christ and say unto him; " Master 
carest thou not that we perish?' ' That great person- 
age lifts his head from the pillow of the fisherman's 
coat, walks to the front of the vessel, and looks out in- 
to the storm. All around him are the smaller boats, 
driven in the tempest, and through it comes the cry of 
drowning men. By the flash of the lightning I see the 
calm brow of Christ as the spray dropped from his 
beard. He has one word for the sky and another for 
the waves. Looking up^ward he cries: "Peace!" Look- 
ing downward he says: "Be still!" 

The waves fall flat on their faces, the foam melts, the 
extinguished stars relight their torches. The tempest 
falls dead and Christ stands with his feet on the neck 
of the storm. And while the sailors are bailing out the 
boats, and while they are trying to untangle the cord- 
age the disciples stand in amazement, now looking in- 
to the calm sea, then into the calm sky, then into the 
calm Savior's countenance, and they cry out: "What 
manner of a man is this that even the winds and the 
sea obey him?" 

HAVE CHRIST ON YOUR SHIP 

The subject in the first place impresses me with the 
fact that it is very important to have Christ in the ship, 
for all those boats would have gone to the bottom of 
Gennesaret if Christ had not been present. Oh, what 
a lesson for you aiid for me to learn! We must always 



98 talmage's sermons. 

have Christ in the ship. Whatever voyage we under- 
take, into whatever enterprise we start, let us always 
have Christ in the ship. All you can do with ut- 
most tension of body, and mind, and soul you are 
bound to do, but oh! have Christ in every enterprise, 
Christ in every voyage. 

There are men who ask God's help at the beginning 
of great enterprises. He has been with them in the 
past; no trouble can overthrow them; the storms might 
come down from the top of mount Hermon and lash 
Geunesaret into foam and into agony, but it could not 
hurt them. But here is another man who starts out 
in worldly enterprise, and he depends on the uncertain- 
ties of this life. He has no God to help him. After 
awhile the storm comes and tosses off the masts of the 
ship; he puts out his life-boat and the long boat; the 
sheriff and the auctioneer try to help him off; they can't 
help him off; he must go down — no Christ in the ship. 
Your life will be made up of sunshine and shadows. 
There may be in it Arctic blasts or tropical tornadoes; 
I know not what is before you, but I know if you 
have Christ with you all shall be well. You may seem 
to get along without the religion of Christ while every- 
thing goes smoothly, but after awhile, when sorrow 
hovers over the soul, when the waves of trial dash 
clear over the hurricane deck, and the decks are crowd- 
ed with piratical disasters — oh, what would you do 
then without Christ in the ship? Take God for your 
portion, God for your guide, God for your help; then 
all is well; all is well for time, all shall be well forever. 
Blessed is that man who puts in the Lord his trust. 
He shall never be confounded. 

But my subject also impresses me with the fact that 
when people start to follow Christ they must not 



THE STORMY PASSAGE. 99 

THE MARTYRS, 
expect smooth sailing. 

These disciples got into the small boats, and I have 
no doubt thej said: "What a beautiful day this is! 
What a smooth sea! What a bright sky this is! How 
delightful is sailing in this boat! And as for the waves 
under the keel of the boat, why, they only make the 
motion of our little boat the more delightful.'' But 
-when the winds swept down and the sea was tossed 
into wrath, then they found that following Christ was 
not smooth sailing. So you have found it; so I have 
found it. Did you ever notice the end of the life of the 
apostles of Jesus Christ? You would say, if ever men 
ought to have had a smooth life, a smooth departure, 
then those men, the disciples of Jesus Christ, ought to 
have had such a departure and such a life. St. James 
lost his head. St. Philip was hanged to death on a 
pillar. St. Matthew had his life dashed out with a hal- 
bert. St. Mark was dragged to death through the 
streets. St. James the Less was beaten to death with 
a fuller's club. St. Thomas was struck through with 
a. spear. They did not find following Christ smooth 
•ailing. Oh, how they were all tossed in the tempest! 
John Huss in the fire, Hugh McKall in the hour of 
martyrdom, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Scotch 
Covenanters — did they find it smooth sailing? But 
why go into history when we can draw from our own 
memory illustrations of the truth of what I say? Some 
young man in a store trying to serve God, while his 
employer scoffs at Christianity; the young men in the 
same store, antagonistic to the Christian religion, teas- 
ing him, tormenting him about his religion, trying 
to get him mad. They succeed in getting him mad, 
saying: "You'er a pretty Christian!" Does that 



100 talmage's sermons. 

young man find it smooth sailing when he tries to fol- 
low Christ? Or you remember a Christian girl. Her 
father despises the Christian religion; her mother des- 
pises the Christian religion; her brothers and sisters 
scoff at the Christian religion; she can hardly find a 
quiet place in which to say her prayers. Did she find 
it smooth sailing when she tried to follow Jesus Christ? 
Oh, no! All who would live the life of the Christian 
religion must suffer presecution: if you do not find it 
in one way you will get it in another way. The ques- 
tion was asked: "Who are the nearest the throne?" 
And the answer came back: "These are they who came 
up out of great tribulation — great flailing as the orig- 
inal has it; great flailing, great pounding — and had 
their robes washed and made white in the blood of the 
lamb." Oh, do not be disheartened! Take courage. 
You are in glorious companionship. God will see you 
through all trials and he will deliver you. 
DO NOT BE FRIGHTENED. 

My subject impresses me with the fact that good 
people sometimes get very much frightened. 

In the tones of these disciples as they rushed into the 
back part of the boat I find they are frightened almost 
to death. They say: "Master, carest thou not that 
we perish?" They had no reason to be frightened, for 
Christ was in the boat. I suppose if we had been there 
we would have been just as much affrighted. Perhaps 
more. In all ages very good people get very much 
affrighted. It is often so in our day and men say: "Why, 
look at the bad lectures; look at the various errors 
going over the church of God. We are going to found- 
er. The church is going to perish. She is going down." 
Oh, how many good people are affrighted by iniquity 
in our day and think the church of Jesus Christ is go- 



102 talmage's sermons. 

ing to be overthrown, and are just as much affrighted as 
were the disciples of my text. Don't worry, don't fret, 
as though iniquity were going to triumph over right- 
eousness. A lion goes into a cavern to sleep. He lies 
down, with his shaggy mane covering the paws. 
Meanwhile the spiders spin a web across the mouth 
of the cavern and say: " We have captured him." Gos- 
samer thread after gossamer thread, until the whole 
front of the cavern is covered with the spiders' web 
and the spiders say: " The lion is done; the lion is fast." 
After awhile the lion has got through sleeping; he 
rouses himself; he shakes his mane; he walks out into 
the sunlight; he does not even know the spiders web 
is spun, and w T ith his voice shakes the mountain. So 
men come spinning their sophistries and skepticism about 
Jesus Christ; he seems to be sleeping. They say: "We 
have captured the Lord; he will never come forth again 
npon the nation; Christ is captured forever. His reli- 
gion will never make any conquest among men." But 
after awhile the lion of the tribe of Judah will rouse 
himself and come forth to shake mightily the nations. 
What's a spider's web to the aroused lion! Give truth and 
error a fair grapple and truth will come off victor. 

But there are a great many good people who get af- 
frighted in other respects; they are affrighted in our 
day about revivals. They say: "Oh! this is a strong 
religious gale; we are afraid the church of God is going 
to be upset, and there are going to be a great many 
people brought into the church that are going to be of 
no use to it," and they are affrighted whenever they see 
a revival taking hold of the churches. As though a 
ship captain, with 5,000 bushels of wheat for a cargo, 
should say some day, coming upon deck: "Throw over- 
board all the cargo," and the sailors should say: "Why> 



THE STORMY PASSAGE. 103 

captain, what do you mean? "0h,"sa3 T s the captain, 
"we have a peck of chaff that has got into this 5,000 
bushels of wheat, and the only way to get rid cf the 
chaff is to throw all the wheat overboard." Now, that 
is a great deal wiser than the talk of a great many 
Christians who want to throw overboard all the thou- 
sands and tens of thousands of souls who are the sub- 
jects of revivals. Throw all overboard because they 
are brought into the kingdom of God through great re- 
vivals, because there is a peck of chaff, a quart of chaff, 
a pint of chaff! I say, let them stay until the last day; 
the Lord will divide the chaff from the wheat. Do not 
be afraid of a great revival. Oh that such gales from 
heaven might sweep through all our churches! Oh, for 
such days as Richard Baxter saw in England, and 
Rodert 2vicCheyne saw in Dundee! Oh, for such days as 
Johnathan Edwards saw in Northampton! 

A GOOD STORY OF OLD JOHN LIVINGSTON. 
I have often heard my father tell the fact that in the 
early part of this century a revival broke out at Somer- 
ville, N. J., and some people were very much agitated 
about it. They said: "Oh, you are going to bring too 
many people into the church at once," and they sent 
down to New Brunswick to get John Livingston to stop 
the revival. Well, there was no better soul in all the 
world than John Livingston. He went and looked at 
the revival; they wanted him to stop it. He stood in 
the pulpit on the Sabbath and looked over the solemn 
auditory, and he said: "This, brethern is in reality the 
work of God; beware how you try to stop it." And 
he was an old man, leaning heavily on his staff— a very 
old man. And he lifted that staff, and took hold of the 
small end cf the staff, and began to let it fall slowly 
through between the finger and the thumb, and he said: 



104 talmage's sermons. 

"Oh, thou impenitent, thou art falling now — falling from 
life, falling away from peace and heaven, falling as cer- 
tainly, as that cane is falling through my hand— falling 
certainly, though perhaps falling slowly!" And the 
cane kept on falling through John Livingston's hand. 
The religious emotion in the audience was overpowering, 
and men saw a type of 'their doom, as the cane kept 
falling and falling, until the nob of the cane struck Mr. 
Livingston's hand, and he clasped it stoutly and said: 
"But the grace of God can stop you as I stopped that 
cane, "and then there was a gladness all through the 
house at the fact of pardon, and peace, and salvation. 
"Well," said the people after the service: "I guess you 
had better send Livingston home; he is making the re- 
vival worse." Oh, for gales from heaven to sweep all 
the continents! The danger of the church of God is not 
in revivals. 

JESUS IS BOTH GOD AND MAN. 

Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that 
Jesus was God and man in the same being. Here he is 
in the back part of the boat. Oh, how tired he looks; 
what sad dreams he must have! Look at his counte- 
nance; he must be thinking of the cross to come. Look 
at him, he is a man— bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. 
Tired, he falls asleep; he is a man. But then I find 
Christ at the prow of the boat; I hear him say: 
"Peace be still, '<and I see the storm kneeling at his feet 
and the tempests folding their wings in his presence; 
he is God. 

If I have sorrow and trouble and want sympathy I 
go and kneel down at the back of the boat and say: 
"Oh, Christ, weary one of Gennesaret, sympathize with 
all my sorrows, man of Nazareth, man of the cross." 
A man, a man. But if I want toconquer my spiritual 




JESUS HEALING THE BLIND. 



106 talmage's sermons. 

foes, if I want to get the victory over sin, death, and hell, 
I come to the front of the boat, and I kneel down, and 
I say: "Oh, Lord Jesus Christ, thou who dost hush 
the tempest, hush all my grief, hush all my temptation 
hush all my sin." A man, a man; a God, a God. 
CHRIST CAN HUSH THE TEMPEST. 

I learn once more from this subject that Christ can 
hush a tempest. 

It did seem as if everything must go to ruin. The 
disciples had given up the idea of managing the ship, 
the crew were entirely demoralized, yet Christ rises, 
and he puts his foot on the storm, and it crouches at 
his feet. Oh, yes! Christ can hush the tempest. You 
have had trouble. Perhaps it was the little child tak- 
en away from you — the sweetest child of the household, 
the one who asked the most curious questions, and 
stood around you with the greatest fondness, and the 
spade cut down through your bleeding heart. Perhaps 
it was an only son, and your heart has ever since been 
like a desolated castle, the owls of the night hooting 
among the fallen arches and the crumbling stairways. 
Perhaps it was an aged mother. You always went to 
her with your troubles. She was in your home to 
welcome your children into life, and when they died 
she was there to pity you; that old hand will do you 
no more kindness; that white lock of hair you put away 
in the casket or in the locket didn't look as it usually 
did when she brushed it away from her wrinkled brow 
in the home circle or in the country church. Or your 
property gone; you said: "I have so much bank stock, 
I have so many government securities, I have so many 
houses, I have so many farms — all gone, all gone." 
Why, sir, all the storms that ever trampled with their 
thunders, all the shipwrecks, have not been worse than. 



THE STORMY PASSAGE. 107 

this to you. Yet you have not been completely over- 
thrown. Why? Christ says: I have that little one 
in my keeping. I can care for him as well as you can, 
better than you can, O bereaved mother! Hushing the 
tempest. When your property went away, God said: 
"There are treasures in heaven, in banks that never 
break. Jesus hushing the tempest. There is one 
storm into which we will all have to run. The moment 
when we let go of this world and try to take hold of 
the next we will want all the grace possible. Yonder 
I see a Christian soul rocking on the surges of death; 
all the powers of darkness seem let out against that 
soul — the whirling wave, the thunder cf the sky, the 
shriek of the wind, all seem to unite together; but that 
soul is not troubled there is no sighing, there are no tears; 
plenty of tears in the room at the departure, but 
he weeps no tears — calm, satisfied, and peaceful; all is 
well. By the flash of the storm you see the harbor just 
ahead, and you are making for that harbor. All shall 
be well, Jesus being our guide. 

"Into the harbor of heaven now we glide; 

We're home at last, home at last. 
Softly we drift on the bright, silv'ry tide, 

We're home at last. 

"Glory to God! all our dangers are o'er, 
We stand secure on the glorified shore; 
Glory to God! we will shout ever more, 
We'er home at last. ' ' 




IN CANA,OF GALILEE. 




A MARRIAGE FEAST. 



[Delivered near Cana, of Galliee, December, 22, 1889.] 
"Thou hast kept the good wine until now." John ii, 10. 

THE WEDDING IN CANA. 

/ fiS& TANDING not far off from the demolished town 
c^SK of "what was once called Cana of Galilee, I be- 
^P'* think myself of our Lord's first manhood mira- 
cle, which has been the astonishment of the ages. My 
visit last week to that place makes vivid in my mind 
that beautiful occurrence in Christ's ministry. My text 
brings us to a wedding in that village. It is a wed- 
ding in common life, two plain people having pledged 
each other, hand and heart, and their friends having 
(109) 



110 TALM AGE'S SERMONS. 

come in for congratulation. The joy is not the less be- 
cause there are no pretension. In each other they find 
all the future they want. The daisy in the cup on the 
table may mean as much as a score of artistic garlands 
fresh from the hot-house. When a daughter goes off 
from home with nothing but a plain father's blessing 
and a plain mother's loYe she is missed as much as 
though she were a princess. It seems hard, after the 
parents have sheltered her for eighteen years, that in a 
few short months her affections should have been car- 
ried off by another, but mother remembers how it was 
in her own case when she was young, and so she braces 
up until the wedding has passed, and the banqueters 
are gone, and she has a good cry all alone. 

THE MIRACLE AT THE WEDDING. 

Well, we are to-day at the wedding of Cana of Galilee. 
Jesus and his mother have been invited. It is evident 
that there are more people there than were expected. 
Either some people have come who were not invited, or 
more invitations have been sent out than it was sup- 
posed would be accepted. Of course there is not enough 
supply of wine. You know that there is nothing more 
embarrassing to a housekeeper than a scant supply. 
Jesus sees the embarrassment, and he comes up immedi- 
ately to relieve it. He sees standing six water-pots. 
He orders the servants to fill them with water, then 
waves his hand over the water, and immediately it is 
wine — real wine. Taste of it, and see for yourselves; 
no logwood in it, no strychinein it, but first-rate wine. 
I will not now be diverted to the question so often dis- 
cussed in my own country, whether it is right to drink 
wine. I am describing the scene as it was. When God 
makes wine he makes the very best wine, and 130 gal- 
lons of it standing around in these water-pots — wine so 



A MARRIAGE FEAST. Ill 

good that the ruler of the feast tastes it and says: 
"Why, this is really better than anything we have had! 
Thou hast kept the good wine until now." Beautiful 
miracle! A prize was offered to the person who should 
write the best essay about the miracle in Can a. 
Long manuscripts were presented in the competition, but 
a poet won the prize by just this one line descriptive of 
the miracle: 
"The unconscious water saw its God and blushed." 

THE WONDERFUL SYMPATHY OF CHRIST. 

We learn from this miracle, in the first place, that 
Christ has sympathy with housekeepers. You might 
have thought that Jesus would have said: "I can not 
be bothered with household deficiency of wine. It is 
not for me, lord of heaven, of earth, to become caterer 
to this feast. I have vaster things than this to attend 
to." Not so said Jesus. The wine gave out and Jesus, 
by miraculous power, came to the rescue. Does there 
ever come a scant supply in your household? Have 
you to make a very close calculation? Is it hard work 
for j^ou to carry on things decently and respectably? 
If so, don't sit down and cry; don't go out and fret, 
but go to him who stood in the house in Cana of Gali- 
lee. Pray in the parlor! Pray in the kitchen! Let 
there be no room in your house unconsecrated by the 
voice of prayer. If you have a microscope put under it 
one drop of water and see the insects floating about, 
and when you see that God makes them, come to the 
conclusion that he will take care of 3^ou and feed you — 
Oh, ye of little faith! 

A boy asked if he might sweep the snow from the 
steps of a house. The lady of the household said: 
"Yes-; you seem verypoor." Hesays: "I am verypoor." 
She says: " Don't you sometimes get discouraged and 



112 talmage's sermons. 

feel that God is going to let you starve?" The lad 
looked up in the woman's face and said: "Do you 
think God will let me starve when I trust him and then 
do the best I can?" Enough theology for older people. 
Trust in God and do the best you can. Amidst all the 
worriments of housekeeping go to him; he will help you 
control your temper, and supervise your domestics, 
and entertain your guests, and manage your home 
economies. There are hundreds of women weak, and 
nervous, and exhausted with the cares of housekeeping. 
I commend you to the Lord Jesus Christ as the best 
adviser and the most efficient aid — the Lord Jesus who 
performed his first miracle to relieve a housekeeper. 

THE ABUNDANCE OF CHRIST'S GIVING. 

I learn also from this miracle that Christ does things 
in abundance. I think a small supply of wine would 
have made up for the deficiency. I think certainly they 
must have had enough for half of the guests. One gal- 
lon of this wine will do; certainly five gallons will be 
enough; certainly ten. But Jesus goes on, and he gives 
them 30 gallons, and 40 gallons, and 50 gallons, and 
70 gallons, and 100 gallons, and 130 gallons of the 
very best wine. 

It is just like him, doing everything on the largest 
and most generous scale. Does Christ, our creator, go 
forth to make leaves? He makes them by the whole 
forest full; notched like the fern, or silvered like the as- 
pen, or broad like the palm; thickest in the tropics, 
Oregon forests. 

Does he go forth to make flowers? He makes plenty 
of them; they flame from the hedge, they hang from the 
top of the grapevine in blossoms, they roll in the blue 
wave of the violets, they toss their white surf into the 



114 talmage's sermons. 

spiraea— enough for every child's hand a flower, enough 
to make for every brow a chaplet, enough with beauty 
to cover up the ghastliness of all the graves. 

Does he go forth to create water? He pours it out, 
not by the cup full, but by a river full, a lake full, an 
ocean full, pouring it out until all the earth has enough 
to drirk' and enough with which to wash. 

Does Jesus, our Lord, provide redemption? It is not 
a little salvation for this one, a little for that, and a lit- 
tle for the other, but enough for all — " Whosoever will, 
let him come." Each man an ocean full for himself. 
Promises for the young, promises for the old, promises 
for the lowly, promises for the blind, for the halt, for 
the outcast, for the abandoned. Pardon for all, com- 
fort for all, mercy for all, heaven for all; not merely a 
cupful of gospel glory, but 130 gallons. Ay, the tears 
of godly repentance are all gathered up into God's 
bottle, and some day, standing before the throne, we 
will lift our cup of delight and ask that it be filled with 
the wine of heaven, and Jesus, from that bottle of tears, 
will begin to pour in the cup, and we will cry: " Stop, 
Jesus, we do not want to drink our own tears!" and 
Jesus will say : " Know ye not that the tears of earth 
are the wine of heaven ? " Sorrow may endure, but joy 
cometh in the morning. 

TRY TO MAKE OTHERS HAPPY. 

I remark further, Jesus does not shadow the joys of 
others with his own griefs. He might have sat down in 
that wedding and said: "I have so much trouble, so 
much poverty, so much persecution, and the cross is 
coming; I shall not rejoice, and the gloom of my face 
and of my sorrows shall be cast over all this group." 
So said not Jesus. He said to himself: "Here are two 
persons starting out in married life. Let it be a joyful 



A MARRIAGE FEAST. 115 

occasion. I will hide my own griefs. I will kindle their 
joy." There are many not so wise as that. I know a 
household where there are many little children where for 
two years the musical instrument has been kept shut 
because there has been trouble in the house. Alas for 
the folly! Parents saying : "We will have no Christ- 
mas tree this coming holiday because there has been 
trouble in the house. Hush that laughing up.stairs! 
How can there be any joy when there has been so much 
trouble?" And so they make everything consistently 
doleful, and send their sons and daughters to ruin with 
the gloom they throw around them. 

Oh, my dear friends, do you not know those children 
will have trouble enough of their own after awhile? Be 
glad they can not appreciate all yours. Keep back the 
cup of bitterness from your daughter's lips. When your 
head is down in the grass of the tomb poverty may 
come to her, betrayal to her, bereavement to 
her. Keep back the sorrows as long as you 
can. Do you not know that your son may, 
after awhile, have his heart broken? Stand 
between him and all harm. You may not fight his bat- 
tles long; fight them while you may. Throw not the 
chill of your own despondency over his soul ; rather be 
like Jesus, who came to the wedding hiding his own 
grief and kindling the joys of others. So I have seen 
the sun, on a dark day, struggling amidst the clouds, 
black, ragged, and portentious, but after awhile the 
sun, with golden spa heaved back the blackness, and 
the sun laughed to the lake, and the lake laughed to the 
sun, and from horizon to horizon, under the saffron 
sky, the water was all turned into wine. 

CHRIST FAVORS THE LUXURIES OF LIFE. 

I learn from this miracle that Christ is not impatient 



116 talmage's sermons. 

with the luxuries of life. It was not necessary that they 
should have that wine. Hundreds of people have been 
married without any wine. We do not read that any 
of the other provisions fell short. When Christ made 
the wine it was not a necessity, but a positive luxury. 
I do not believe that he wants us to eat hard bread and 
sleep on hard mattresses, unless we like them the best. 
I think, if circumstances will allow, we have a right to 
the luxuries of dress, the luxuries of diet, and the luxu- 
ries of residence. There is no more religion in an old 
coat than in a new one. We can serve God drawn by 
golden-plated harness as certainly as when we go a-loot. 
Jesus Christ will dwell with us under a fine ceiling as 
well as under a thatched roof, and when you can get 
wine made out of water drink as much of it as you can. 

What is the difference between a Chinese mud hovel 
and an American home? What is the difference between 
the rough bear-skins of the Russian boor and the outfit 
of an American gentleman? No difference except that 
which the gospel of Christ, directly or indirectly, has 
caused. When Christ shall have vanquished all the 
world I suppose every house will be a mansion, and 
every garment a robe, and every horse an arch-necked 
courser, and every carraige a glittering vehicle, and every 
man a king, and every woman a queen, and the whole 
earth a paradise; the glories of the natural world har- 
monizing with the glories of the material world until 
the very bells of the horses shall jingle the praises of the 
Lord. 

CHRIST DOES NOT DENY US JOYS. 

I learn further from this miracle that Christ has no 
impatience with festal joy, otherwise he would not have 
accepted the invitation to that wedding. He certainly 
would not have done that which increased the hilarity. 



A MARRIAGE EEAST. 117 

There may have been many in that room who were hap- 
p3', but there was not one of them that did so much 
for the joy of the wedding party as Christ himself. He 
was the chief of the banqueters. When the wine gave 
out he supplied it, and so, I take it, he will not deny us 
the jo3^s that are positively festal. 

I think the children of God have more right to laugh 
than any other people and to clap their hands as loudly. 
There is not a single joy denied them that is given to 
any other people. Christianity does not clip the wings 
of the soul. Religion does not frost the flowers. What 
is Christianity? I take it to be simply a proclamation 
from the throne of God of emancipation for all the en* 
slaved, and if man accepts the terms of that proclama- 
tion and becomes free has he not a right to be merry? 
Suppose a father has an elegant mansion and large 
grounds? To whom will he give the first privilege of 
these grounds? Will he say: "My children, you must 
not walk through these paths, or sit down under these 
trees, or pluck this fruit. These are for outsiders. They 
may walk in them." No father would say anything 
like that. He would say: "The first privileges in all 
the grounds and all of my house shall be for my own 
children." And yet men try to make us believe that 
God's children are on the limits, and the chief refresh _ 
mcnts and enjoyments of life are for outsiders and not 
for his own children. It is stark atheism. There is no 
innocent beverage too rich for God's child to drink; 
there is no robe too costly for him to wear; there is no 
hilarity too great for him to indulge in, and no house 
too splendid for him to live in. He has a right to the 
joys of earth; he shall have a right to the joys of heaven. 
Though tribulation, and trial, and hardship may come 
unto him let him rejoice. "Rejoice in the Lord, ye 



A MARRIAGE FEAST. 119 

righteous; and again I say, rejoice." 

CHRIST WITH US IN OUR EXTREMITY— A STORY. 

I remark again that Christ comes to us in the hour of 
our extremity. He knew the wine was giving out be- 
fore there "was any embarrassment or mortiiication. 
Why did he not perform the miracle sooner ? Why wait 
until it was all gone and no help could come from any 
source and then come in and perform the miracle ? This 
is Christ's way, and when he did come in at the hour of 
extremity he made first-rate wine, so that they cried 
/ut: "Thou hast kept the good wine until now." 
Jesus in the hour of extremity ! He seems to prefer that 
hour. 

In a Christian home in Poland great poverty had 
come, and on the week-day the man was obliged to 
move out of the house with his entire family. That 
night he knelt with his family and prayed to God. 
While they were kneeling in prayer there was a tap on 
the window-pane. They opened the window and there 
was a raven that the family had fed and trained, and in 
its bill a ring all set with precious stones, which was 
found out to be a ring belonging to the royal family. It 
was taken up to the king's residence and for the honesty 
of the man in bringing it back he had a house given to 
him, and a garden, and a farm. Who was it that sent 
the raven tapping on the window ? The same God that 
sent the raven to feed Elijah by the brook of Cherith. 
Christ in the hour of extremity ! 

You mourned over your sins. You could not find the 
way out. You sat down and said : " God will not be 
merciful. He has cast me off; " but in that, the darkest 
hour of your history, light broke from the throne, and 
Jesus said "0 wanderer, come home. I have seen all 
thy sorrows. In this, the hour of thy extremity, I of- 



120 talm age's sermons. 

fer thee pardon and everlasting life ! " 

Trouble came. Yon were almost torn to pieces by 
that trouble. Yon braced yourself up against it. You 
said : "I will be a stoic, and will not care ; " but before 
you had got through making the resolution it broke 
down under you. You felt that all your resources were 
gone, and then Jesus came. "In the fourth watch of 
the night," the bible says, "Jesus came walking on the 
sea." Why did he not come in the first watch? or in 
the second watch ? or in the third watch ? I do not 
know. He came in the fourth, and gave deliverance to 
his disciples. Jesus in the last extremity ! 

I wonder if it will be so in our very last extremity. 
We shall fall suddenly sick, and doctors will come, but 
in vain. Something will say: "You must go." No one 
to hold us back, but the hands of eternity stretched out 
to pull us on. What then ? Jesus will come to us, and 
as we say, "Lord Jesus, I am afraid of that water; I 
can not wade through to the other side," he will say, 
" Take hold of my arm ; " and we will take hold of his 
arm, and then he will put his foot in the. surf of the 
water, taking us down deeper, deeper, deeper, and our 
soul will cry: "All thy waves and billows have gone 
over me." They cover the feet, come to the knee, pass 
the girdle, and come to the head, and our soul cries out: 
"Lord Jesus Christ, I cannot hold thine arm any 
longer." Then Jesus will turn around, throw both his 
arms about us, and set us on the beach, far beyond the 
tossing of the billows. Jesus in the last extremity. 

JESUS INVITES US TO A GRANDER WEDDING. 

That wedding scene is gone now. The wedding-ring 
has been lost, the tankards have been broken, the house 
is down, but Jesus invites us to a grander wedding. 
You know that the bible says that the church is the 



A MARRIAGE FEAST. 121 

lamb's wife, and the Lord will after awhile come to 
fetch her home, There will be gleaming of torches in 
the sky, and the trumpets of God will ravish the air 
with their music, and the church, robed in white, will 
put aside her veil, and look up into the face of her Lord 
the king, and the bridegroom will say to the bride : 
" Thou hast been faithful all these years ! The mansion 
is ready! Home home! Thou art fair, my love!" And 
then he shall put upon her brow the crown of domin- 
ion, and table will be spread, and it will reach across 
the skies, and the mighty ones of heaven will come in, 
garlanded with beauty and striking their cymbals ; and 
the bridegroom and the bride will stand at the head of 
the table, and the banqueters, looking up, will wonder 
and admire, and say : "That is Jesus the bridegroom . 
But the scar on his brow is covered with the coronet, 
and the stab in his side is covered with a robe ! " and 
" That is the bride! The weariness of her earthly 
woe lost in the flush of this wedding triumph ! " 

There will be wine enough at that wedding ; not com- 
ing up from the poisoned vats of earth, but the vine- 
yards of God will press their ripest clusters, and the cups 
and the tankards will blush to the brim with the 
heavenly vintage, and then all the banqueters will drink 
standing. Esther, having come up from the bacchanal- 
ian revelry of Ahasuerus, where a thousand lords feas- 
ted, will be there. And the queen of Sheba, from the 
banquet of Solomon, will be there. And the mother of 
Jesus, from the wedding in Cana, will be there, And 
they all will agree that the earthly feasting was poor 
compared with that. Then, lifting their chalices in that 
holy light, they shall cry to the Lord of the feast: 
" Thou hast kept the good wine until now." 




(122) 



IN BEYROOT. 




THE SKY ANTHEM. 



[A Christmas Sermon delivered at Beyroot, Palestine, December, 24, 1889. J 
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, good will to- 
ward men." Luke, ii, 14. 

CHRISTMAS EVE IN PALESTINE. 

f' T last I have what I longed for, a Christmas 
eve in the Holy land. This is the time of year 
that Christ landed. He was a December Christ. 
This is the chill air through which he descended. I 
look up through these Christmas skies, and I see no 
loosened star hastening southward to halt above Beth- 
lehem, but all the stars suggest the star of Bethlehem. 
(123) 



124 talmage's sermons. 

No more need that any of them run along the sky to 
point downward. In quietude they kneel at the feet of 
him who, though once an exile, is now enthroned for- 
ever. Fresh up from Bethlehem I am full of the scenes 
suggested by a visit to that village. You know that 
whole region of Bethlehem is famous in bible story. 
There were the waving harvests of Boaz in which Ruth 
gleaned for herself and weeping Naomi. There David 
the warrior with thirty and three men of unheard of 
self-denial broke through the Philistine army to get 
him a drink. It was to that region that Joseph and 
Mary came to have their names enrolled in the census. 
That is what the scripture means when it says they 
came "to be taxed," for people did not in those days 
rush after the assessors of tax any more than they 
now do. 

The village inn was crowded with the strangers who 
had come up by the command of government to have 
their names in the census, so that Joseph and Mary 
were obliged to lodge in the stables. You have seen 
some of those large stone buildings in the center of 
which the camels were kept, while running out from 
this center in all directions there were rooms, in one of 
which Jesus was born. Had his parents been more 
showily appareled, I have no doubt they would have 
found more comfortable entertainment. That night in 
the fields the shepherds, with crook and kindled fires, 
were watching their flocks, when hark to the sound of 
voices strangely sweet! Can it be that the maidens of 
Bethlehem have come out to serenade the weary shep- 
herds? But now a light stoops upon them like the 
morning, so that the flocks arise, shaking their snowy 
fleece and bleating to their drowsy young. The heavens 
are filled with armies of light, and the earth quakes 
under the harmony as, echoed back from cloud to cloud. 



THE SKY ANTHEM. 125 

it rings over the midnight hills: " Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace, good will to men!" It 
seems the crown of royalty, and dominion, and power 
which Christ left behind him was hung on the sky in 
sight of Bethlehem. Who knows but that that crown 
may have been mistaken by the wise men for the star 
running and pointing downward. 

INDIGENCE NOT DEGREDATION. 

My subject, in the first place, impresses me with the 
fact that indigence is not always significant of degra- 
dation ! When princes are born heralds announce it, 
and cannon thunder it, and flags wave it, and illumina- 
tions set cities on fire with the tidings. Some of us in 
England or America remember the time of rejoicing 
when the prince of Wales was born. You can remem- 
ber the gladness throughout Christendom at the nativ- 
ity in the palace at Madrid. But when our glorious 
prince was born there was no rejoicing on earth. Poor 
and growing poorer, yet the heavenly recognition that 
Christmas night shows the truth of the proposition 
that indigence is not always significant of degradation. 

In all ages there have been great hearts throbbing 
under rags, tender sympathies under rough exterior, 
gold in the quartz, Parian marble in the quarry, and in 
every stable of privation wonders of excellence that 
have been the joy of the heavenly host. All the great 
deliverers of literature and of nations were born in 
homes without affluence, and from their own privation 
learned to speak and fight for the oppressed. Many a 
man has held up his pine-knot light from the wilderness 
until all nations and generations have seen it, and off 
of his hard crust of penury has broken the bread of 
knowledge and religion for the starving millions of the 



126 talmage's sermons. 

race. Poetry, and science, and literature, and com- 
merce, and laws, and constitutions, and liberty, like 
Christ, were born in a manger. All the great thoughts 
which have decided the destiny of nations started in 
obscure corners, and had Herods who wanted to slay 
them, and Iscariots who betrayed them, and rabbles 
that crucified them, and sepulchcrs that confined them 
until they burst forth in glorious resurrection. Strong 
character, like the rhododendron, in an Alpine plant 
that grows faster in the storm. Men are like wheat } 
worth all the more for being flailed. Some of the most 
useful people would never have come to positions of 
usefulness had they not been ground and pounded and 
hammered in the foundry of disaster. When I see Moses 
coming up from the ark of bulrushes to be the greatest 
lawgiver of the ages, and Amos from tending the herds 
to make Israel tremble with his prophecies, and David 
from the sheepcot to sway the poet's pen and the 
king's scepter, and Peter from the fishing net to be the 
great preacher at the Pentecost, T find proof of the 
truth of my proposition that indigence is not always 
significant of degradation. 

DUTY AND BLESSING. 

My subject also impresses me with the thought that 
it is while at our useful occupations that we have the 
divine manifestations. Had those shepherds gone that 
night into Bethlehem and risked their flocks among the 
wolves they would not have heard the song of the 
angels. In other words, that man sees most of God and 
heaven who minds his own business. We all have our 
posts of duty, and standing there God appears to us. 
We are all shepherds or shepherdesses, and we have our 
flocks of cares, and annoyances, and anxieties, and we 
must tend them. 



THE SKY ANTHEM. ±2 i 

We sometimes hear very good people say : " If I had 
a month or a year or two to do nothing but attend to 
religious things I would be a great deal better than I 
am now." You are mistaken. Generally the best peo- 
ple are the busy people. Elisha was plowing in the 
field when the prophetic mantle fell upon him. Mat- 
thew was attending to his custom-house duties when 
Christ commanded him to follow. James and John 
were mending their nets w T hen Christ called them to be 
fishers of men. Had they been snoring in the sun Christ 
would not have called their indolence into the apostle- 
ship. Gideon was at work with the flail on the thrash- 
ing floor when he saw the angel. Saul was with great 
fatigue hunting up the lost asses when he found the 
crown of Israel. The prodigal son would never have 
reformed and wanted to have returned to his father's 
house if he had not first gone into business; though it 
was swine-feeding. Not once out of a hundred times 
will a lazy man become a Christian. Those who have 
nothing to do are in very unfavorable circumstances for 
the receiving of divine manifestations. It is not when 
you are in idleness, but when you are, like the Bethle- 
hem shepherds, watching your flocks, that the glory de- 
scends and there is joy among the angels of God over 
your soul penitent and forgiven. 

RELIGION IS JOYFUL. 
My subject also strikes at the delusion that the relig- 
ion of Christ is dolorous and grief-infusing. The music 
that broke through the midnight heavens was not a 
dirge, but an anthem. It shook joy over the hills. It 
not only dropped upon the shepherds but it sprang up- 
ward among the thrones. The robe of a Saviour's 
righteousness is not black. The Christian life is not 
made up of weeping and cross-bearing and war-wag- 



128 talmage's sermons. 

ing. Through the revelation of that Christmas night 
I find that religion is not a groan but a song. In a 
world of sin and sick-bed and sepulchers we must have 
trouble, but in the darkest night the heavens part with 
angelic song. You may, like Paul, be shipwrecked, but 
I exhort you to be of good cheer, for you shall all escape 
safe to the land. Religion does not show itself in the 
elongation of the face and the cut of the garb. The 
Pharisee who puts his religion into his phylactery has 
none left for his heart. Fretfulness and complaining do 
not belong to the family of Christian graces which 
move into the heart when the devil moves out. Chris- 
tianity does not frown upon amusements and recrea- 
tions. It is not a cynic, it is not a shrew, it chokes no 
laughter, it quenches no light, it defaces no art. Among 
the happy it is the happiest. It is just as much at home 
on the play ground as it is in the church. It is just as 
graceful in the charade as it is in the psalm-book. It 
sings just as well in Surrey gardens as it prays in St. 
Paul's. Christ died that we might live. Christ walked 
that we might ride. Christ wept that we might laugh. 

THE MANGER AND THRONE. 

Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that 
glorious endings sometimes have very humble begin- 
nings. The straw pallet was the starting point, but 
the shout in the midnight sky revealed what would be 
the glorious consummation. Christ on Mary's lap, 
Christ on the throne of universal dominion — what an 
humble starting! What a glorious ending! Grace be- 
gins on a small scale in the heart. You see only men as 
trees walking. The grace of God in the heart is a feeble 
spark, and Christ has to keep both hands over it lest 
it be blown out. What an humble beginning! But 
look at the same man when he has entered heaven. No 



THE SKY ANTHEM. 



129 



crown able to express his royalt}^. No palace able to 
express his wealth. No scepter able to express his power 
and his dominion . Drinking from the fountain that drips 
from the everlasting rock. Among the harpers harping 
with their harps. On a sea of glass mingled with fire. 
Before the throne of God, to go no more out forever. 
The spark of grace that Christ had to keep both hands 
over lest it come to extinction, having flamed up into 
honor, glory and immortality. What humble starting! 
What glorious consummation! 




The new testament church was on a small scale. 
Fishermen watched it. Against the uprising walls 
crashed infernal enginery. The world said anathema. 
Ten thousand people rejoiced at every seeming defeat 
and said: "Aha! aha! so we would have it." Martyrs 
on fire cried: "How long, O Lord, how long?" Very 
humble starting, but see the difference at the consum- 
mation, when Christ with his almighty arm has struck 
off the last chain of human bondage, and Himalayas 



130 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

shall be Mount Zion, and Pyrenees Moriah, and oceans 
the walking place of him who trod the wave cliffs of 
stormed Tiberias, and island shall call to island, sea to 
sea, continent to continent, and the song of the world's 
redemption rising, the heavens, like a great sounding 
board, shall strike back the shout of salvation to the 
earth until it rebounds again to the throne of God, and 
all heaven, rising on their thrones beat time with their 
scepters. Oh, what an humble beginning! What a 
glorious ending! Throne linked to a manger, heavenly 
mansions to a stable. 

THE DOUBLE MISSION OF CHRIST. 

My subject also impresses me with the effect of Christ's 
mission upward and downward. Glory to God, peace 
to man. When God sent his son into the world angels 
discovered something new in God, something they had 
never seen before. Not power, not wisdom, not love. 
They knew all that before. But when God sent his son 
into this world then the angels saw the spirit of self- 
denial in God, the spirit of self-sacrifice in God. It is 
easier to love an angel on his throne than a thief on 
the cross, a seraph in his worship than an adultress 
in her crime. When the angels saw God — the God who 
would not allow the most insignificant angel in heaven 
to be hurt— give up his son, his only son, they saw 
something that they had never thought of before, and 
I do not wonder that when Christ started out on that 
pilgrimage the angels in heaven clapped their wings in 
triumph and called on all the hosts of heaven to help 
them celebrate it, and sang so loud that the Bethlehem 
shepherds heard it: "Glory to God in the highest." 

But it was also to be a mission of peace to man. In- 
finite holiness — accumulated depravity. How could they 
ever come together? The gospel bridges over the dis- 



THE SKY ANTHEM. 131 

tance. It brings God to us. It takes us to God. God 
in us, and we in God. Atonement! Atonement! Jus- 
tice satisfied, sin forgiven, eternal life secured, heaven 
built on a manger. 

But it was to be the pacification of all individual and 
international animosities. What a sound this word 
of peace had in the Roman Empire that boasted of the 
number of people it had massacred, that prided itself 
on the number of the slain, that rejoiced at the tremb- 
ling providences. Sicily, and Sardinia, and Macedonia, 
and Egypt had bowed to her sword and crouched at 
the cry of her war eagles. She gave her chief honor to 
Scipio, and Fabius, and Caesar — all men of blood. What 
contempt they must have had there for the penniless, 
unarmed Christ in the garb of a Nazarene, starting out 
to conquer all nations. There never was a place on 
earth where that word peace sounded so offensively to 
the ears of the multitudes as in the Roman empire. They 
did not want peace. The greatest music they ever 
heard was the clanking chains of their captives. If all 
the blood that has been shed in battle could be gathered 
together it would bear up a navy. The club that 
struck Abel to the earth has its echo in the butcheries 
of all ages. Edmund Burke, who gave no wild statis- 
tics, said that there had been spent in slaughter $35,- 
000,000,000 or what would be equal to that, but he 
had not seen into our times, when in our own day, in 
America, we expended $3,000,000,000 in civil war. 

THE VISION OF BATTLES. 
Oh, if we could now take our position on some high 
point and see the world's armies march past! There go 
the hosts of Israel through a score of Red seas — one of 
water, the rest of blood. There go Cyrus and his army, 
with infuriate yell rejoicing over the fall of the gates of 



THE SKY ANTHEM. 133 

Babylon. There goes Alexandei , leading forth his hosts, 
and conquering all the world but himself, the earth reel- 
ing with the battle gash of Arbela and Persepolis . There 
goes Ferdinand Cortes, leaving his butchered enemies 
on the table-lands, once fragrant with vanilla and cov- 
ered over with groves of flowering cacao. There goes 
the great Frenchman, leading his army down through 
Egypt like one of its plagues and up through Russia 
like one of its own icy blasts. Yonder is the grave trench 
under the shadow of Sebastopol. There are the ruins 
of Delhi and Allahabad, and yonder are the inhuman 
Sepoys and the brave regiments under Havelock aveng- 
ing the insulted flag of Britain, while cut right through 
the heart of my native land is a trench in which there 
lie 1,000,000 northern and southern dead. 

Oh, the tears! Oh, the blood! Oh, the long marches! 
Oh, the hospital wounds! Oh, the martyrdom! Oh, the 
death! But brighter than the light which flashed on 
all these swords and shields and musketry is the light 
that fell on Bethlehem, and louder than the bray of the 
trumpets, and the neighing of the charges, and the 
crash of the walls, and the groaning of the dying armies, 
is the song that unrolls this moment from the sky, 
sweet as though all the bells of heaven rung a jubilee, 
" Peace on earth, good will toward men." Oh, when 
will the day come — God hasten it! — when the swords 
shall be turned into plowshares, and the fortresses shall 
be remodeled into churches, and the men of blood bat- 
tling for renown shall become good soldiers for Jesus 
Christ, and the cannon now striking down whole 
columns of death shall thunder the victories of the truth. 

When we think of the whole world saved we are apt 
to think of the few people that now inhabit it. Only a 
very few compared with the population to come. And 



134 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

what a small part cultivated. Do yon know it has been 
authentically estimated that three-fourths of Europe is 
yet all barrenness, and that nine hundred and ninety- 
nine one-thousandth part of the entire globe is unculti- 
vated? This is all to be cultivated, all inhabited, and 
all gospelized. Oh, what tears of repentance when 
nations begin to weep ! Oh, what supplications when 
continents begin to pray! Oh, what rejoicing when 
hemispheres begin to sing ! Churches will worship on 
the places where this very hour smokes the blood of 
human sacrifice, and wandering through the snake-in- 
fested jungles of Africa Christ's heel will bruise the 
serpent's head. Oh, -when the trumpet of salvation 
shall be sounded everywhere and the nations are re- 
deemed, a light will fall upon every town brighter than 
that which fell upon Bethlehem, and more overwhelm- 
ing than the song that fell on the pasture fields where 
the flocks fed there will be a song louder than the voice 
of the storm-lifted oceans, " Glory to God inthehigest," 
and from all nations, and kindred, and people, and 
tongues will come the response : " And on earth peace, 
and good will toward men ! " 

A TOUCHING STORY. 
On this Christmas we bring you good tidings of great 
joy. Pardon for all sin, comfort for all trouble, and 
life for the dead. Shall we now take this Christ into 
our hearts ? The time is passing. This is the closing of 
the year. How the time speeds by. Put your hand on 
your heart— one, two, three. Three times less it will 
beat. Life is passing like gazelles over the plain. Sor- 
rows hover like petrels over the sea. Death swoops 
like a vulture from the mountains. Misery rolls up to 
our ears like waves. Heavenly songs fall to us like 
stars. 



THE SKY ANTHEM. 135 

I wish you a merry Christmas, not with worldly dis- 
pensations, but merry with gospel gladness, merry with 
pardoned sin, merry with hope of reunion in the skies 
with all your loved ones who have preceded you. In 
that grandest and best sense a merry Christmas. 

And God grant that in our final moment we may have 
as bright a vision as did the dying girl when she said : 
" Mother" — pointing with her thin, white hand through 
the window — "Mother, what is that beautiful land out 
yonder beyond the mountains, the high mountains?" 
"Oh," said the mother, " my darling, there are no 
mountains within sight of our home." "Oh, yes,', she 
said, " Don't you see them — that beautiful land beyond 
the mountains out there, just beyond the high moun- 
tains ? ' ' 

The mother looked down into the face of her dying 
child and said : "My dear I think that must be heaven 
that you see." "Well, then," she said, "father, you 
come, and with your strong arms carry me over those 
mountains into that beautiful land beyond the high 
mountains." "No," said the weeping father, "my dar- 
ling, I can't go with you." " Well," she said, clapping 
her hands, "never mind; never mind; I see yonder a 
shining one coming. He is coming now, in his strong 
arms to carry me over the mountains to the beautiful 
land— over the mountains, over the high mountains." 




IN VIENNA. 




THE HALF NOT TOLD. 

[Delivered in Vienna, January, 5th., 1890.] 
"Behold, the half was not told me." I Kings x., 7. 

THE TWO CIRCLES. 

J~^ PPEARING before you to-day, my mind yet agi- 
tated with the scenery of the Holy land, from 
which we have just arrived, you will expect me 
to revert to some of the scenes once enacted there. 
Mark a circle around Lake Galilee, and another circle 
around Jerusalem, and you describe the two regions in 
which cluster memories of more events than in any 
other two circles. Jerusalem was a spell of fascination 
that will hold me the rest of my life. Solomon had re- 
solved that that city should be the center of all sacred, 
regal, and commercial magnificence. He set himself to 
work, and monopolized the surrounding desert as a 
highway for his caravans. He built the city of Palmyra 
around one of the principal wells of the east, so that 
all the long trains of merchandise from the east were 
obliged to stop there, pay toll, and leave part of their 
wealth in the hands of Solomon's merchants. He man- 
ned the fortress Thapsacus at the chief ford of the 
Euphrates and put under guard everything that passed 
there. The three great products of Palestine — wine 
pressed from the richest clusters and celebrated all the 
(137) 



138 talmage's sermons. 

world over ; oil, which in that hot country is the entire 
substitute for butter and lard, and was pressed from 
the olive branches until every tree in the country be- 
came an oil-well, and honey, which was the entire sub- 
stitute for sugar— these three great products of the 
country Solomon exported and received in return fruits* 
and precious woods, and the animals of every clime. 

He went down to Ezion-geber and ordered a fleet of 
ships to be constructed, oversaw the workmen, and 
watched the launching of the flotilla which was to go 
out on more than a year's voyage to bring home the 
wealth of the then known world. He heard that the 
Egyptian horses were large and swift and long-maned 
and round-limbed, and he resolved to purchase them, 
giving $85 apiece for them, putting the best of these 
horses in his own stall, and selling the surplus to foreign 
potentates at great profit. 

He heard that there was the best of timber on Mount 
Lebanon and he sent out 180,000 men to hew down 
the forest and drag the timber through the mountain 
gorges, to construct it into rafts to be floated to Joppa 
and from thence to be drawn by ox- teams twenty-five 
miles across the land to Jerusalem. He heard that there 
were beautiful flowers in other lands. He sent for them, 
planted them in his own garden, and to this very day 
there are flowers found in the ruins of that city such as 
are to be found in no other part of Palestine, the lineal 
descendants of the very flowers that Solomon planted. 
He heard that in foreign groves there were birds of 
richest voice and most luxuriant wing. He sent out 
people to catch them and bring them there, and he put 
them into cages. 

Stand back now and see this long train of camels 
coming up to the king's gate, and the ox-trains from 



THE HALF NOT TOLD. 139 

Egypt, gold and silver and precious stones, and beasts 
of every hoof, and birds of every wing, and fish of every 
scale ! See the peacocks strut under the cedars, and the 
horsemen run, and the chariots wheel ! Hark to the 
orchestra ! Gaze upon the dance ! Not stopping to look 
into the wonders of the temple step right on to the 
causeway, and pass up to Solomon's palace. 
A VISION OF BEAUTY. 
Here we find ourselves amid a collection of buildings 
on which the king had lavished the wealth of many em- 
pires. The "genius of Hiram, the architect, and of the 
other artists is here seen in the long line of corridors, 
and the suspended gallery, and the approach to the 
throne; Traceried window opposite traceried window. 
Bronzed ornaments bursting into lotus, and lily, and 
pomegranate. Chapiters surrounded by network of 
leaves in which imitation fruit seemed suspended as 
in hanging baskets. Three branches — so Josephus tells 
us— three branches sculptured on the marble, so thin 
and subtle that even the leaves seemed to quiver. A 
laver capable of holding 500 barrels of water on 600 
brazen ox heads, which gushed with water and filled 
the whole place with coolness and crystalline brightness 
and musical splash. Ten tables chased with chariot 
wheel, and lion, and cherubim. Solomon sat on a 
throne of ivory. At the seating place of the throne, on 
each end of the steps, a brazen lion. Why, my friends, 
in that place they trimmed their candles with snuffers 
of gold, and they cut their fruits with knives of gold, 
and they washed their faces in basins of gold, and they 
scooped out the ashes with shovels of gold, and they 
stirred the altar fires with tongs of gold. Gold reflected 
in the water ! Gold flashed from the apparel ! Gold 
blazing in the crown ! Gold, gold, gold ! 



140 talmage's sermons. 

Of course the news of the affluence of that place went 
out everywhere by every caravan and by wing of every 
ship, until soon the streets of Jerusalem are crowded 
with curiosity -seekers. What is that long procession 
approaching Jerusalem ? I think from the pomp of it 
there must be royalty in the train. I smell the breath 
of the spices which are brought as presents, and I hear 
the shout of the drivers, and I see the dust-covered 
caravan, showing that they come from far away. Cry 
the news up to the palace. The queen of Sheba ad- 
vances. Let all the people come out to see. Let the 
mighty men of the land come out on the palace corri- 
dors. Let Solomon come down the stairs of the palace 
before the queen has alighted. Shake out the cinnamon 
and the saffron, and the calamus, and the frankincense, 
and pass it into the treasure house. Take up the dia- 
monds until they glitter in the sun. 

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA. 

The queen of Sheba alights. She enters the palace. 
She washes at the bath. She sits down at the banquet. 
The cup-bearers bow. The meat smokes. The music 
trembles in the dash of the waters from the modern sea. 
Then she rises from the banquet, and walks through 
the conservatories, and gazes on the architectures, 
and she asks Solomon many strange questions, and 
then she learns about the religion of the Hebrews, and 
she then and there becomes a servant of the Lord God. 

She is overwhelmed. She begins to think that all the 
spices she brought, and all the precious wood which are 
intended to be turned into harps andpsaltreies and into 
railings for the causeway between the temple and the 
palace, and the $1,800,000 in money-she begins to think 
that all these presents amount to nothing in such a 
place, and she is almost ashamed that she has brought 



THE HALF NOT TOLD. 141 

them, and she says within herself: "I heard a great 
deal about this place, and about this wonderful religion 
of the Hebrews, but I find it far beyond my highest 
anticipations. I must add more than fifty per cent to 
what has been related. It exceeds everything that I 
could have expected. The half, the half was not told me:" 
WOMEN, WEALTH, RELIGION. 

I learn from this subject what a beautiful thing it is 
when social position and wealth surrender themselves 
to God. When religion comes to a neighborhood the 
first to receive it are the women. Some men say it is 
because they are weak minded. I say it is because they 
have quicker preception of what is right, more ardent 
affection, and capacity for sublimer emotion. After the 
women have received the gospel then all the distressed 
and the poor of both sexes, those who have no friends, 
except Jesus. Last of all come the greatly prospered. 
Alas, that it is so! 

If there are those who have been favored of fortune, 
or, as I might better put it, favored of God, surrender 
all you have and all you expect to be to the Lord who 
blessed this queen of Sheba. Certainly you are not 
ashamed to be found in this queen's company. I am 
glad that Christ has had his imperial friends in all ages 
— Elizabeth Christina, queen of Prussia; Maria Feodo- 
rovna, queen of Russia; Maria, empress of France- 
Helena, the imperial mother of Constantine; Arcadia, 
from her great fortunes building public baths in Con. 
stantinople and toiling for the alleviation of the masses; 
Queen Clotilda, leading her husband and 3,000 of his 
armed warriors to Christian baptism; Elizabeth of 
Burgundy, giving her jeweled glove to a beggar, and 
scattering great fortunes among the distressed; Prince 
Albert, singing "Rock of ages" in Windsor castle, and 



142 talmage's sermons. 

Queen Victoria, incognita, reading the scriptures to a 
dying pauper. 

I bless God that the day is coming when royalty will 
bring all its thrones, and music all its harmonies, and 
painting all its pictures, and sculpture all its statuary, 
and architecture all its pillars, and conquest all its 
scepters, and the queens of the earth, in long line ad- 
vance, frankincense filling the air, and the camels laden 
with gold, shall approach Jerusalem, and the gates shall 
be hoisted, and the great burden of splendor shall be 
lifted into the palace of this greater than Solomon. 

EARNESTNESS IN SEARCH OF TRUTH. 
Again, my subject teaches me what is earnestness in 
the search of truth. Do you know where Sheba was ? 
It was in Abyssinia, or some say in the southern part 
of Arabia Felix. In either case it was a great way off 
from Jerusalem. To get from there to Jerusalem she 
had to cross a country infested with bandits and go 
across blistering deserts. Why did not the queen of 
Sheba stay at home and send a committee to inquire 
about this new religion, and have the delegates report 
in regard to that religion and wealth of King Solomon ? 
She wanted to see for herself and hear for herself. She 
could not do this by work of committee. She felt that 
she had a soul worth ten thousand kingdoms like Sheba 
and she wanted a robe richer than any woven by orien- 
tal shuttles, and she wanted a crown set with the 
jewels of eternity. Bring out the camels. Put on the 
spices! Gather up the jewels of the throne and put 
them on the caravan. Start now; no time to be lost. 
Goad on the camels. When I see that caravan, dust- 
covered, weary and exhausted, trudging on across the 
desert and among the bandits until it reaches Jerusalem, 
I say : " There is an earnest seeker after truth." 




EARNEST SEEKERS. 



(143) 



144 talmage's sermons. 

But there are a great many who do not act in that 
way. They all want to get the truth, but they want 
the truth to come to them ; they do not want to go to 
it. There are people who fold their arms and say : "I 
am ready to become a Christian at any time ; if I am 
to be saved I shall be saved, and if I am to be lost I 
shall be lost." But Jerusalem will never come to you; 
you must go to Jerusalem. The religion of the Lord 
Jesus Christ will not come to you ; you must go and 
get religion. Bring out the camels ; put on all the sweet 
spices, all the treasures of the heart's affection. Start 
for the throne. Go in and hear the waters of salvation 
dashing in fountains all around about the throne. Sit 
down at the banquet — the wine pressed from the grapes 
of the heavenly Eshcol, the angels of God the cup- 
bearers. Goad on the camels. The bible declares it: 
" The queen of the south " — that is, this very woman I 
am speaking of— " the queen of the south shall rise up 
in judgment against this generation and condemn it; 
for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to 
hear the wisdom of Solomon ; and behold ! a greater 
than Solomon is here." What infatuation, the sitting 
down in idleness expecting to be saved. " Strive to en- 
ter in at the straight gate. Ask, and it shall be given 
you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be 
opened to you." Take the kingdom of heaven by vio- 
lence. Urge on the camels ! 

RELIGION A SURPRISE. 
Again, my subject impresses me with the fact that re- 
ligion is a surprise to any one that gets it. This story 
of the new religion in Jerusalem and of the glory of 
King Solomon, who was a type of Christ — that story 
rolled on and on and was told by every traveler coming 
back from Jerusalem. The news goes on the wing of 



THE HALF NOT TOLD. 145 

every ship and with every caravan, and you know- a 
story enlarges as it is retold, and by the time that story 
gets down into the southern part of Arabia Felix and 
the queen of Sheba hears it, it must be a tremendous 
story. And yet this queen declares in regard to it, 
although she had heard so much and had her anticipa- 
tions raised so high, the half, the half was not told her. 

So religion is always a surprise to any one that gets 
it. The story of grace— an old story. Apostles preached 
it with rattle of chain; martyrs declared it with arm 
fire; deathbeds have affirmed it with visions of glory, 
and ministers of religion have sounded it through the 
lanes and the highways, and the chapels and the cathe- 
drals. It has been cut into stone with chisel, and spread 
on the canvas with pencil; and it has been recited in 
the doxology of great congregations. And yet, when a 
man first comes to loook on the palace of God's mercy, 
and to see the royalty of Christ, and the wealth of this 
banquet, and the luxuries of his attendants, and the 
loveliness of his face, and the joy of his service, he ex- 
claims with prayers, with tears, with sighs, with tri- 
umph: ' 'The half— the half was not told me!" 

I appeal to those who are Christians. Compare the 
idea you had of the joy of the Christian life before you 
become a Christian with the appreciation of that joy 
you have now since you have become a Christian, and 
you are willing to attest before angels and men that 
you never, in the days of your spiritual bondage, had 
any appreciation of what was t6 come. You are ready 
today to answer and say in regard to the discoveries 
you have made the mercy, and the grace, and the good- 
ness of God: "The half— the half was not told me!" 

Well, we hear a great deal about the good time that 
is coming to this world when it is to be girded with 



146 talmage's sermons. 

salvation. Holiness on the bells of the horses. The lion's 
mane patted by the hand of a babe. Ships of Tarshish 
bringing cargoes for Jesus, and the hard, dry, barren, 
winter-bleached, storm-scarred, thunder-split rock 
breaking into floods of bright water. Deserts into 
which dromedaries thrust their nostrils, because they 
were afraid of the simoon — deserts blooming into car- 
nation roses and silver-tipped lillies. 

It is an old story. Everybody tells it. Isaiah told it, 
John told it, Paul told it, Ezekiel told it, Luther told it, 
Calvin told it, John Milton told it— every-body tells it, 
and yet — and yet when the midnight shall fly the hills, 
and Christ shall marshall his great army, and China, 
dashing her idols into the dust, shall hear the voice of 
God and wheel into line, and India, destroying her Jug- 
gernant and snatching up her little children from the 
Ganges, shall hear the voice of God and wheel into line, 
and vine-covered Italy, and wheat-crowned Russia, and 
all the nations of the earth shall hear the voice of God 
and fall into line; then the church, which has been toil, 
ing and struggling through the centuries, robed and 
garlanded like a bride adorned for her husband, shall 
put aside her veil and look up into the face of the lord 
and king and say: The half— the half was not told me. 

THE FINAL WONDER! 
Well, there is coming a greater surprise to every 
Christian — a greater surprise than anything I have de- 
picted. Heaven is an old story. Everybody talks about 
it. There is hardly a hymn in the hymn-book that does 
not refer to it. Children read about it in their Sabbath- 
school books. Aged men put on their spectacles to 
study it. We say it is a harbor from the storm. We 
call it home. We say it is the house of many mansions. 
We weave together all sweet, beautiful, delicate, exhil- 



THE HALF NOT TOLD. 147 

arant words ; we weave them into letters, and then we 
spell it out in rose and lily and amaranth. And yet that 
place is going to be a surprise to the most intelligent 
Christian. Like the queen of Sheba the report has 
come to us from the far country, and many of us have 
started. It is a desert march, but we urge on the 
camels. What though our feet be blistered on the way? 
We are hastening to the palace. We take all our loves 
and hopes and Christian ambitions, as frankincense 
and myrrh and cassia to the great king. We must not 
rest. We must not halt. The night is coming on and 
it is not safe out here in the desert. Urge on the camels. 
I see the domes against the sky, and the houses of Leb- 
anon, and the temples, and the gardens. See the foun- 
tains dancing in the sun, and the gates flash as they 
open to let in the poor pilgrim. 

Send the word up to the palace that we are coming 
and that we are weary of the march of the desert. 
The king will come out and say: "Welcome to the 
palace; bathe in these waters; recline on these banks. 
Take this cinnamon, and franki'icense, and myrrh, and 
put it upon a censer and swing it before the altar," 

And yet, my friends, when heaven bursts upon us it 
will be a greater surprise than that— Jesus on the 
throne and we made like him ! All our Christian friends 
surrounding us in glory ! All our sorrows, and tears, 
and sins gone by forever ! The thousands of thousands, 
the one hundred and forty and four thousand, the great 
multitudes that no man can number, will cry, world 
without end : " The half— the half was not told me!" 





Napoleon Witnessing the Burning op Moscow. 



DOWNFALL OF HIHEM. 

[Delivered in Paris, Jan., 12th, 1890.] 
"Jehosheba, the daughter of King Joram, sister of Ahaziah, took 
Joash, the son of Ahaziah, and stole him from among the king's sons 
which were slain; and they hid him, even him and his nurse, in the 
bed-chamber from Athaliah, so that he was not slain. And he was 
with her hid in the house of the Lord six years,'' II Kings, xi., 2, 3. 

A WORD TO GRANDMOTHERS. 
c^s) RANDMOTHERS are more lenient with their 
v rFv children's children than they were with their 
£$8p£ own. At 40 years of age, if discipline be neces- 
sary, chastisement is used, but at 70, the grandmother, 
(149) 



150 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

looking upon the misbehavior of the grandchild, is a- 
pologetic and disposed to substitute confectionery for 
whip. There is nothing more beautiful than this mel- 
lowing of old age toward childhood. Grandmother 
takes out her pocket handkerchief and wipes her speta- 
cles and puts them on, and looks down into the face of 
her mischievous and rebellious descendant, and says: 
" I don't think he meant to do it ; let him off this time ; 
I'll be responsible for his behavior in the future." My 
mother, with the second generation around her — a 
boisterous crew — said one day : "I suppose they ought 
to be disciplined, but I can't do it. Grandmothers 
are not fit to bring up grandchildren." But here, in 
my text, we have a grandmother of a different hue, 

I have within a few days been at Jerusalem, where 
the occurrence of the text took place, and the whole 
scene came vividly before me while I was going over the 
site of the ancient temple and climbing the towers of 
the king's palace. Here in the text it is old Athaliah 
the queenly murderess. She ought to have been honor- 
able. Her father was a king. Her husband was a king. 
Her son was a king. And yet we find her plotting for 
the extermination of the entire royal family, including 
her own grandchildren. The executioner's knives are 
sharpened. The palace is red with the blood of princes 
and princesses. On all sides are shrieks, and hands 
thrown up, and struggle, and death-groan. No mercy I 
Kill! Kill! 

A WIFE STEALS A CHILD. 

But while the ivory floors of the palace run with 
carnage, and the whole land is under the shadow of a 
great horror, a fleet-footed woman, a clergyman's wife, 
Jehosheba by name, stealthily approaches the imperial 
nursery, seizes upon the grandchild that had somehow 



DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 151 

as yet escaped massacre, wraps it tip tenderly but in 
haste, snuggles it against her, flies down the palace 
stairs, her heart in her throat lest she be discovered in 
this Christian abduction. Get her out of the way as 
quick as you can, for she carries a precious burden, even 
a young king. With this youthful prize she presses into 
the room of the ancient temple, the church of olden 
time, unwraps the young king and puts him down, 
sound asleep as he is, and unconscious of the peril that 
has been threatened; and there for six years he is secreted 
in that church apartment. Meanwhile old Athaliah 
smacks her lips with satisfaction and thinks that all 
the royal family are dead. 

But the six years expire, and it is now time for young 
Joash to come forth and take the throne, and to push 
back into disgrace and death old Athaliah. The ar- 
rangements are all made for political revolution. The 
military come and take possession of the temple, swear 
lo3^alty to the boy Joash, and stand around for his 
defense. See the sharpened swords and burnished 
shields! Everything is ready. Now Joash, half affright- 
ed at the armed tramp of his defenders, scared at the 
vociferation of his admirers, is brought forth in full 
regalia. The scroll of authority is put in his hands, the 
the coronet of government is put on his brow, and the 
people clapped, and waved, and huzzaed, and trumpet- 
ed. "What is that?" said Athaliah. "What is that 
sound over in the temple?" And she flies to see, and on 
her way they meet her and say: "Why, haven't you 
heard? You thought you had slain all the royalfamily, 
but Joash has come to light." Then the queenly mur- 
deress, frantic with rage, grabbed her mantle and tore 
it to tatters, and cried until she foamed at the mouth: 
"You have no right to crown my grandson. You have 



152 talmage's sermons. 

no right to take the government from my shoulders. 
Treason! Treason!" While she stood there crying 
that, the military started for her arrest, and she took 
a short cut through a back door of the temple and ran 
through the royal stables; but the battle-axes of the 
military fell on her in the barn-yard, and for many a 
day when the horses were being unloosed from the 
chariot after drawing out young Joash the fiery steeds 
would snort and rear passing the place, as they smelt 
the place of the carnage. 

RIGHTEOUSNESS CANNOT BE EXTERMINATED. 
The first thought I hand you from this subject is that 
the extermination of righteousness is an impossibility. 
When a woman is good, she is apt to be very good, and 
when she is bad she is apt to be very bad, and this Ath- 
aliah was one of the latter sort. She would extermin- 
ate the last scion of the house of David, through whom 
Jesus was to come. There was plenty of work for em- 
b aimers and undertakers. She would clear the land of 
all God-fearing and God-loving people. She would put 
an end to everything that could in anywise interfere 
with her imperial criminality. She folds her hands and 
says: " The work is done; it is completely done." Is 
it ? In the swaddling clothes of that church apart- 
ment are wrapped the cause of God, in the cause of 
good government. That is the scion of the house of 
David; it is Jo ash, the Christian reformer ; it is Joash, 
the friend of God ; it is Joash, the demolisher of Baali- 
tish idolatry. Rock him tenderly; nurse him gently. 
Athaliah, you may kill all the other children, but you 
cannot kill him. Eternal defences are thrown all around 
him, and this clergyman's wife, Johosheba, will snatch 
him up from the palace nursery, and will run up and 
down with him into the house of the Lord, and there 



154 talmage's sermons. 

she will hide him for six years, and at the end of that 
time he will come forth for your dethronement and ob- 
literation. 

PERSECUTIONS ARE FUTILE. 

Well, my friends, just as poor a botch does the world 
always make of extinguishing righteousness. Super- 
stition rises up and says : " I will just put an end to 
pure religion." Domitian slew 40,000 Christians. Dio- 
cletian slew 844,000 Christians. And the scythe of 
persecution has been swung through all ages, and the 
flames hissed, and the guillotine chopped, and the bas- 
tile groaned ; but did the foes of Christianity extermi- 
nate it ? Did they exterminate Alban, the first sacrifice ; 
or Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer; or John Oldcastle, the 
Christian nobleman ; or Abdallah, the Arabian martyr; 
or Anne Askew, or Sanders, or Cranmer? Great work 
of extermination they made of it. Just at the time 
when they thought they had slain all the royal family 
of Jesus some Joash would spring up and out and take 
the throne of power and wield a very scepter of Chris- 
tian dominion. 

INFIDELITY FAILS TO ANNIHILATE. 

Infidelity says : " I'll just exterminate the bible," and 
the scriptures were thrown into the street for the mob 
to trample on, and they were piled up in the public 
squares and set on fire, and mountains of indignant 
contempt were hurled on them, and learned universities 
decreed the bible out of existence. Thomas Paine said : 
" In my 'Age of Reason ' I have annihilated the script- 
ures. Your Washington is a pusillanimous Christian, 
but I am the foe of bibles and of churches." Oh, how 
many assaults upon that word ! All the hostilities that 
have ever been created on earth are not to be compared 



DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 155 

with the hostilities against that one book. Said one 
man in his infidel desperation to his wife: ''You must 
not be reading that bible," and he snatched it away 
from her. And though in that bible was a lock of hair 
of the dead child— the only child that God had ever 
given them — he pitched the book with its contents into 
the fire; and stirred it with the tongs and spat on it , 
and cursed it. and said : " Susan, never have any more 
of that damnable stuff here ! " 

How many individual and organized attempts have 
been made to exterminate that bible ! Have they done 
it ? Have they exterminated the British and Foreign 
Bible society ? Have they exterminated the thousands 
of Christian institutions, whose only object is to multi- 
ply copies of the scriptures and throw them broadcast 
around the world ? They have exterminated until in- 
stead of one or two copies of the bible in our homes we 
have eight or ten, and we pile them up in the corners for 
our Sabbath-school rooms and send great boxes of them 
everywhere. 

If they get on as well as they are now going on in the 
work of extermination I do not know but that our 
children may live to see the millennium ! Yea, if there 
should come a time of persecution in which all the 
known bibles of the earth should be destroyed, all these 
lamps of light that blaze in our pulpits and in our fami- 
lies extinguished. In the very day that infidelity and 
sin should be holding a jubilee over the universal extinc- 
tion there would be in some closet of a backwoods 
church a secreted copy of the bible, and this Joash of 
eternal literature would come out and come up and take 
the throne, and the [ Athaliah of infidelity and persecu- 
tion would fly out the back door of the palace and drop 
her miserable carcass under the hoofs of the horses of 



156 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

the king's stable. You can not exterminate Christian- 
ity ! You cannot kill Joash ! 

THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SAVING. 

The second thought I hand you from my subject is, 
that there are oportunities in which we may save royal 
life. You know that profane history is replete with 
stories of strangled monarchs and of young princes 
who have been put out of the way. Here is the story 
of a young king saved. How Jehosheba. the clergy- 
man's wife, must have trembled as she rushed into the 
imperial nursery and snatched up Joash. How she 
hushed him, lest by his cry he hinder the escape. Fly 
with him ! Jehosheba, you hold in your arms the cause 
of God and good government. Fail, and he is slain. 
Succeed, and you turn the tide of the world's history 
in the right direction. It seems as if between that 
young king and his assassins there is nothing but the 
frail arm of a woman. But why should we spend our 
time in praising the bravery of expedition when 
God asks the same thing of you and me ? All around 
us are the imperiled children of a great king. 

They are born of almighty parentage and will come 
to a throne or a crown if permitted. But sin, the old 
Athaliah, goes forth to the massacre. Murderous 
temptations are out for the assassination. Yalens, the 
emperor, was told that there was somebody in his 
realm who would usurp the throne and that the name 
of the man who should be the usurper would begin 
with the letters T. H. E. 0. D., and the edictwent forth 
from the emperor's throne: "Kill everybody whose 
name begins with T. H. E. 0. D." And hundreds and 
thousands were slain, hoping by that massacre to put 
an end to that one usurper. But sin is more terrific in 
its denunciation. If matters not how you spell your 



158 talmage's sermons. 

name, you come under its knife, under its sword, under 
its doom, unless there be some omnipotent relief 
brought to the rescue. But, blessed be God, there is 
such a thing as delivering a royal soul. Who will 
snatch away Joash ? 

PERSONS IN YOUR SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS! 

This afternoon, in your Sabbath-school class, there 
will be a prince of God — some one who may yet reign 
as king forever before the throne; there will be some 
one in your class who has a corrupt physical inheritance; 
there will be some one in your class who has a father 
and mother who do not know how to pray; there will 
be some one in your class who is destined to command 
in church or state — some Cromwell to dissolve a parlia- 
ment, some Beethoven to touch the world's harp-strings, 
some John Howard to pour fresh air into the lazaretto, 
some Florence Nightengale to bandage the battle 
wounds, some Miss Dix to soothe the crazed 
brain, some John Frederick Oberlin to educate the 
besotted, some David Brainard to change the Indian's 
war-whoop to a Sabbath song, some John Wesley to 
marshall threefourths of Christendom, some John Knox 
to make queens turn pale, some Joash to demolish idol- 
atry and strike for the kingdom of heaven. 

There are sleeping in your cradles by night, there are 
playing in your nurseries by day, imperial souls wait- 
ing for dominion, and whichever side the cradle they 
get out will decide the destiny of empires. For each 
one of those children sin and holiness counted— Athaliah 
on one side and Jehosheba on the other. But I hear 
people say; " What's the use of bothering children 
with religious instruction? Let them grow up and 
choose for themselves." Suppose some one had said to 
Jehosheba: "Don't interfere with that young Joash 



DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 159 

Let him grow up and decide whether he likes the palace 
or not, whether he wants to be king or not. Don't dis- 
turb his volition." Jehosheba knew right well that 
unless that day the young king was rescued he would 
not be rescued at all. 

I tell you, my friends, the reason we don't reclaim all 
our children from worldliness is because we begin too 
late. Parents wait until their children lie before they 
teach them the value of truth. They wait until their 
children swear before they teach them the importance 
of righteous conversation. They wait until their chil- 
dren are all wrapped up in this world before they tell 
them of a better world. Too late with your prayers. 
Too late with your discipline. Too late with your ben- 
ediction. You put all care upon your children between 
12 and 18. Why do you not put the chief care between 
4 and 9? It is too late to repair a vessel when it has 
got out of the dry-dock! It is too late to save Joash 
after the executioners have broken in. May God arm 
us all for this work of snatching royal souls from death 
to coronation. 

HOW PHOCUS DUG HIS GRAVE AND DIED. ! 

Can you imagine any sublimer work than this soul- 
saving? That was what flushed Paul's cheek with en- 
thusiasm; that was what led Munson to risk his life 
amid Bornesian cannibals; that was what sent Dr. 
Abeel to preach under the consuming skies of China; 
that was what gave courage to Phocus in the third 
century. When the military officers came to put him to 
death for Christ's sake he put them to bed that they 
might rest while he himself went out and in his own 
garden dug his grave and then came back and said: 
' 'I am ready." But they were shocked at the idea of 
taking the life of their host. He said: "It is the will 



160 talmage's sermons. 

of God that I should die," and he stood on the margin 
of his own grave and they beheaded him. You say it 
is a mania, a foolhardiness, a fanaticism. Rather 
would I call it a glorious self-abnegation, the thrill of 
eternal satisfaction, the plucking of Joash from death. 
and raising him to coronation. 

THE CHURCH IS A GOOD HIDING PLACE. 

The third thought I hand to you from my text is 
that the church of God is a good hiding-place. When 
Jehosheba rushes into the nursery of the king and picks 
up Joash what shall she do with him? Shall she take 
him to some room in the palace? No; for the official 
desperadoes will hunt through every nook and corner 
of that building. Shall she take him to the residence 
of some wealthy citizen? No; that citizen would not 
dare to harbor the fugitive. But she has to take him 
somewhere. She hears the cry of the mob in the streets; 
she hears the shriek of the dying nobility; so she rushes 
with Joash into the room of the temple, into the house 
of God, and then she puts him down. She knows that 
Athaliah and her wicked assassins will not bother the 
temple a great deal; they are not apt to go very much 
to church, and so she sets down Joash in the temple. 
There he will be hearing the songs of the worshipers 
year after year; there he will breathe the odor of the 
golden censers; in that sacred spot he will tarry, secret- 
ed until the six years have passed and he come to en- 
thronement. 

Would to God we were as wise as Jehosheba, and 
knew that the church of God is the best hiding-place. 
Perhaps our parents took us there in early da3^s; they 
snatched us away from the world and hide us behind 
the baptismal fonts and amid the bibles and the psalm 
books. O glorious inclosure! We have been breathing 



162 talmage's sermons. 

the breath of the golden censers all the time, and we 
have seen the lamb on the altar, and we have handled 
the phials which are the prayers of all saints, and we 
have dwelt under the wings of the cherubim. Glorious 
inclosure! When my father and my mother died, and 
the property was settled up, there was hardly anything 
left; but they endowed us with a property worth more 
than any earthly possession, because they hid us in the 
temple. And when days of temptation have come upon 
my soul I have gone there for shelter; and when assault- 
ed of sorrows I have gone there for comfort, and there 
I mean to live. I want, like Joash, to stay there until 
coronation. I mean to be buried out of the house of God . 

Oh, men of the world outside there, betrayed, cari- 
catured, and cheated of the world, why do you not come 
in through the broad, wide-open door of Christian com- 
munion? I wish I could act the part of Jehosheba to- 
day, and steal you away from your perils and hide you 
in the temple. How few of us appreciate the fact that 
the church of God is a hiding-place. There are many 
people who put the church at so low a mark that they 
begrudge it everything, even the few dollars they give 
toward it. They make no sacrifices. They dole a little 
out of their surplusage. They pay their butcher's bill, 
and they pay their doctor's bill, and they pay their 
landlord, and they pay everybody but the lord, and 
they come in at the last to pay the Lord in his church, 
and frown as they say: " There, Lord, it is if you will 
have it, take it— now take it, take it; send me a receipt 
in full, and don't bother me soon again!" 

I tell you there is not more than one man out of a 
thousand who appreciates what the church is. Where 
are the souls that put aside one-tenth for Christian in- 
stitutions — one-tenth of their incomes? Where are those 



DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 163 

who, having put aside that one-tenth, draw upon it 
cheerfully? Why, it is to pull, and drag, and hold on, 
and grab, and clutch; and giving is an affliction to 
most people when it ought to be an exhilaration and a 
rapture. Oh, that God would remodel our souls on this 
subject and that we might appreciate the house of God 
as a great refuge. If your children are to come up to 
lives of virtue and happiness they will come up under 
the shade of the church. If the church does not get them 
the world will. 

SAVE YOUR CHILDREN. 
Ah, when you pass away — and it will not be long be- 
fore you do — when you pass away it will be a satis- 
faction to see your children in Christian society. You 
want to have them sitting at the holy sacraments. 
You want them mingling in Christian associations- 
You would like to have them die in the sacred precints. 
When you are on your dying bed, and your little ones 
come up to take your last word, and you look into 
their bewildered faces, you will want to leave them un- 
der the church's benediction. I don't care how hard 
you are, that is so. I said to a man of the world: 
"Your son and daughter are going to join our church 
nextSunday. Have you any objections?" "Blessyou," 
he said, "objections? I wish all my children belonged 
to the church. I don't attend to those matters my- 
self— I am very wicked — but I am very glad they are 
going, and I shall be there to see them. I am very glad, 
sir; I am very glad. I want them there." And so, 
though you may have been wanderers from God, and 
though you may have sometimes caricatured the church 
of Jesus, it is your great desire that your sons and 
daughters should be standing all their lives within this 
sacred inclosure. 



164 talmage's sermons. 

More than that, you yourself will want the church 
for a hiding place when the mortgage is foreclosed; 
when your daughter, just blooming into womanhood, 
suddenly clasps her hands in a slumber that knows no 
waking; when gaunt trouble walks through the par. 
lor, and the sitting-room, and the dining-hall, and the 
nursery, you will want some shelter from the tempest. 
Ah, some of you have been run upon by misfortune and 
trial; why do you not come into the shelter? I said to 
a widowed mother after she had buried her only son — 
months after I said to her: "How do you get along 
nowadays?" "Oh," she replied, "I get along tolera- 
ble well except when the sun shines." I said: "What 
do you mean by that?" She said: "I can't bear to see 
the sun shine; my heart is so dark that all the bright- 
ness of the natural world seems a mockery to me." Oh, 
darkened soul, oh, broken-hearted man, broken-hearted 
woman, why do you not come into the shelter? I swing 
the door wide open. I swing it from wall to wall. 
Come in! Come in! You want a place where yonr trou- 
bles shall be interpreted, where your burdens shall be 
unstrapped, where your tears shall be wiped away. 

Church of God, be a hiding place to all these people. 
Give them a seat where they can rest their weary souls. 
Flash some light from your chandeliers upon their dark- 
less. With some soothing hymn hush their griefs. 
Oh, church of God, gate of heaven, let me go through 
it! All other institutions are going to fail; but the 
church of God— its foundation is the "Rock of Ages," 
its charter is for everlasting years, its keys are held by 
the universal proprietor, its dividend is heaven, its 
president is God! 

"Sure as thy truth shall last, 

To Zion shall be given 
The brghtest glories earth can yield, 



DOWNFALL OF ATHALIAH. 



165 



And brighter bliss of heaven." 
God grant that all this audience, the youngest, the 
eldest, the worst, the best, may find their safe and glori- 
ous hiding place where Jo ash found it— in the temple! 





ABRAHAM OEFEEING HIS SON ISAAC. 



(166) 



IN LONDON. 




SflLYflTIOHBY FAITH. 

[Delivered in London, England, Jan., 19th., 1890.] 
"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thoushalt besaved". Acts, 
xvi, 31. 

STANDING IN THE PHILIPPIAN DUNGEON ! 

AILS are dark, dull, damp, loathsome places even 
now, but they were worse in the apostolic times. 



I imagine today we are standing in the Philippian 
dungeon. Do 3^ ou not feel the chill ? Do you not hear 
the groan of those incarcerated ones who for ten years 
have not seen the sunlight and the deep sigh of women 
who remember their father's house and mourn over 
their wasted estates? Listen again. It is the cough of 
(167) 



168 talmage's sermons. 

a consumptive or the struggle of one in a nightmare of 
a great horror. You listen again and hear a culprit, 
his chains rattling as he rolls over in his dreams, and 
you say : "God pity the prisoner." But there is an 
other sound in that prison. It is a song of gladness. 
What a place to sing in ! The music comes winding 
through the corridors of the prison, and in all the dark 
wards the whisper is heard: "What's that? What's 
that ? ,' It is the song of Paul and Silas. They cannot 
sleep. They have been whipped, very badly whipped. 
The long gashes on their backs are bleeding yet. They 
lie flat on the cold ground, their feet fast in wooden 
sockets; and of course they can not sleep. But they 
can sing. 

Jailer, what are you doing with these people ? Why 
have they been put in here ? 

Oh, they have been trying to make the world better. 

Is that all? 

That is all. 

A pit for Joseph. 

A lion's cave for Daniel. A blazing furnace for Shad- 
rach. Clubs for John Wesley. An anathema for Philip 
Melanchton. A dungeon for Paul and Silas. 

But while we are standing in the gloom of the Phil- 
ippian dungeon, and we hear the mingling voices of 
sob, and groan, and blasphemy, and hallelujah, sud- 
denly an earthquake ! The iron bars of the prison twist, 
the pillars crack off, the solid masonry begins to heave 
and rock till all the doors swing open, and the walls 
fall with a terrific crash. The jailer, feeling himself re 
sponsible for these prisoners! and feeling suicide to be 
honorable — since Brutus killed himself, and Cato killed 
himself, and Cassius killed himself— puts his sword to 
his own heart, proposing with one strong, keen thrust 



SALVATION BY FAITH. IbU 

to put an end to his excitement and agitation. But 
Paul cries out: "Stop! stop! Do thyself no harm, 
we are all here." Then I see the jailer running through 
the dust and amid the ruin of that prison, and I see 
him throwing himself down at the feet of these prison- 
ers, crying out : " What shall I do ? What shall I do?' 
Then Paul answers: "Get out of this place before 
there is another earthquake; put handcuffs and hob- 
bles on these other prisoners lest they get away." No 
word of that kind. Compact, thrilling, tremendous 
answer; answer memorable all through earth and 
heaven: " Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou 
shalt be saved." 

THE CRASH OF EARTHQUAKES. 
Well, we have all read of the earthquake in Lisbon, in 
Lima, in Aleppo, and in Caraccas, but we live in a lati- 
tude where in all our memory there has not been one 
severe volcanic disturbance. And yet we have seen 
fifty earthquakes. Here is a man who has been build- 
ing up a large fortune. His bid on the money market 
was felt in all the cities. He thinks he has got beyond 
all annoying rivalries in trade and he says to himself: 
"Now I am free and safe from all possible perturba- 
tion." But a national panic strikes the foundations of 
the commercial world and crash ! goes all the magnifi- 
cent business establishment. He is a man who has built, 
up a very beautiful home. His daughters have just come 
home from the seminary with diplomas of graduation. 
His sons have started in life, honest, temperate, and 
pure. When the evening lights are struck there is a 
happy and an unbroken family circle. But there has 
been an accident down at the beach. The young man 
ventured too far out in the surf. The telegraph hurled 
the terror up to the city. An earthquake struck under 



170 talmage's sermons. 

the foundation of that beautiful home. The piano 
closed; the curtains dropped; the laughter hushed. 
Crash ! go all those domestic hopes and prospects and 
expectations. So, my friends, we have all felt the 
shaking down of some great trouble, and there was a 
time when we were as much excited as this man of the 
text, and we cried out as he did: "What shall I do? 
What shall I do?" The same reply that the apostle 
made to him is appropriate to us: "Believe on the 
Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved ? " 
THE SAVIORS NAME. 
There are some documents of so little importance that 
you do not care to put any more than your last name 
under them, or even your initials, but there are some 
documents of so great importance that you write out 
your full name. So the Savior in some parts of the 
bible is called " Lord," and in other parts of the bible 
he is called "Jesus," and in other parts of the bible he is 
called "Christ," but that there might be no mistake 
about this passage all three names come in together — 
the " Lord Jesus Christ." Now, who is this being that 
you want me to trust in and believe in ? Men some- 
times come to me with credentials and certificates of 
good character ; but I can not trust them. There is 
some dishonesty in their looks that makes me know I 
shall be cheated if I confide in them. You cannot put 
your heart's confidence in a man until you know what 
stuff he is made of, and am I reasonable this morning 
when I stop to ask you who this is that you want me 
to trust in ? No man would think of venturing his 
life on a vessel going out to sea that had never been in- 
spected. No, you must have the certificate hung amid- 
ships, telling how many tons it carries, and how long 
ago it was built, and who built it, and all about it. 



SALVATION BY FAITH. 171 

And you can not expect me to risk the cargo of my im- 
mortal interests on board any craft till you tell me 
what it is made of, and where it was made, and what 
it is. 

When, then, I ask you who this is you want me to 
trust in, you tell me he is a very attractive person. 
You tell me that the contemporary writers describe 
him, and they give the color of his eyes, and the color 
of his hair, and they describe his whole appearance as 
being resplendent. Christ did not tell the children to 
come to him. " Suffer little children to come unto me " 
was not spoken to the children ; it was spoken to the 
Pharisees. The children had come without any invita- 
tion. No sooner did Jesus appear than the little ones 
pitched from their mothers' arms, an avalanche of 
beauty and love, into his lap. " Suffer little children to 
come unto me." That was addressed to the Pharisees ; 
not to the children. Christ did not ask John to put his 
head down on his bosom ; John could not help but put 
his head there. Such eyes, such cheeks, such a chin, 
such hair, such physical condition and appearance — 
why, it must have been completely captivating and 
winsome. I suppose a look at him was just to love 
him. Oh! how attractive his manner. Why, when 
the}' saw Christ coming along the street they ran into 
their houses, and they wrapped up their invalids as 
quick as they could, and brought them out that he 
might look at them. Oh! there was something so 
pleasant, so inviting, so cheering in everything he did, 
in his very look. When these sick ones were brought 
out did he say: "Take away these sores; do not 
trouble me with these leprosies ? " No, no ; there was a 
kind look, there was a gentle word, there was a healing 
touch. They could not keep away from him. 



172 talmage's sermons. 

In addition to this softness of character, there was a 
fiery momentum. How the old hypocrites trembled be- 
fore him. How the kings of the earth turned pale. 
Here is a plain man, with a few sailors at his back, 
coming off the sea of Galilee, going up to the palace of 
the Caesars, making that palace quake to the found- 
ations, and uttering a word of mercy and kindness 
which throbs through all the earth, and through all 
the heavens, and through all the ages. Oh! he was a 
loving Christ. But it was not effeminacy or insipidity 
of character; it was accompanied with majesty, infinite 
and omnipotent. 

THE WONDROUS DEATH. 

Lest the world should not realize his earnestness, 
this Christ mounts the cross. You say: i 'If Christ has 
to die, why not let him take some deadly potion and 
lie on a couch in some bright and beautiful home? If 
he must die, let him expire amid all kindly attentions." 
No, the world must hear the hammers on the heads of 
the spikes. The world must listen to the death-rattle of 
the sufferer. The world must feel his warm blood drop- 
ping on each cheek, while it looks up into the face of his 
anguish. And so the cross must be lifted and the hole is 
dug on the top of Calvary. It must be dug three feet 
deep, and then the cross is laid on the ground, and the 
sufferer is stretched upon it, and the nails are pounded 
through nerve, and muscle, and bone, through the right 
hand, through the left hand, and then they shake his 
right hand to see if it is fast and then they shake his 
left foot to see if it is fast, and then they heave up the 
wood, half a dozen shoulders under the weight, and 
they put the end of the cross to the mouth of the hole, 
and they plunge it in, all the weight of his body coming 
down for the first time on the spikes, and while some 



SAYATION BY FATTH. 173 

hold the cross upright others throw in the dirt and 
trample it down, and trample it hard. Oh, plant that 
tree well and thoroughly, for it is to bear fruit such as 
no other tree ever bore. Why did Christ endure it? 
He could have taken those rocks and with them crushed 
his crucifiers. He could have reached up and grasped 
the sword of the omnipotent God and with one clean 
cut have tumbled them into perdition. But no; he was 
to die. He must die. His life for my life. His life for 
your life. 

A STORY OP A TOUNG MAN. 

In one of the European cities a young man died on 
the scaffold for the crime of murder. Some time after 
the mother of this young man was dying and the priest 
came in, and she made a confession to the priest that 
she was the murderer, and not her son; in a moment of 
anger she had struck her husband a blow that slew 
him. The son came suddenly into the room and was 
washing away the wounds and trying to resuscitate 
his father when some one looked through the window 
and saw him and supposed him to be the criminal. 
That young man died for his own mother. You say: 
''It was wonderful that he never exposed her." But I 
tell you of a grander thing. Christ, the son of God> 
died, not for his mother, not for his father, but for his 
sworn enemies. Oh, such a Christ as that— so loving, 
so self-sacrificing — can you not trust him? 
HOW TO TRUST CHRIST. 

I think there are many under the spirit of God who 
are saying : "I will trust him if he will only tell me 
how," and the great question asked by thousands in 
this assemblage is: "How? How?" And while I 
answer your question I look up and utter the prayer 



174 talmage's sermons. 

which Rowland Hill §o often uttered in the midst of his 
sermons: " Master, help! " How are you to trust in 
Christ ? Just as you trust any one. You trust your 
partner in business with important things. If a com- 
mercial house give you a note payable three months 
hence you expect the payment of that note at the end 
of three months. You have perfect confidence in their 
word and in their ability. You go home to-day. You 
expect there will be food on the table. You have confi- 
dence in that. Now, I ask you to have the same confi- 
dence in the Lord Jesus Christ. He says: "You be- 
lieve; I take away your sins," and they are all taken 
away. "What! " you say, "before I pray anymore? 
Before I read my bible any more? Before I cry over 
my sins any more?" Yes, this moment. Believe with 
all your heart and you are saved. 

Why, Christ is only waiting to get from you what 
you give to scores of people every day. What is that? 
Confidence. If these people whom you trust day by 
day are more worthy than Christ, if they are more faith- 
ful than Christ, if they have done more than Christ 
ever did, then give them the preference ; but if you really 
think that Christ is as trustworthy as they are, then 
deal with him as fairly. "Oh!" says some one in a 
light way, "I believe that Christ was born in Bethle- 
hem, and I believe that he died on the cross." Do you 
believe it with your head or your heart? 
SAYING FAITH. 

I will illustrate the difference. You are in your own 
house. In the morning you open a newspaper, and you 
read how Capt. Braveheart on the sea risked his life for 
the salvation of his passengers. You say: "What a 
grand fellow he must have been ! His family deserves 
very well of the country." You fold the newspaper and 



SALVATION BY FAITH. 175 

sit down at the table, and perhaps do not think of that 
incident again. That is historical faith. But now you 
are on the sea, and it is night, and you are asleep, and 
are awakened by the shriek of " Fire ! '? You rush out 
on the deck. You hear, amid the wringing of the 
hands the fainting, the cries : " No hope ! We are lost ! 
we are lost ! " The sail puts out its wings of fire, the 
ropes make a burning ladder in the night heavens, the 
spirit of wreck hisses in the waves, and on the hurri- 
cane deck shakes out its banner of smoke and darkness. 
" Down with the life boats ! " cries the captain. " Down 
with the life boats!/ People rush into them. The 
boats are about full. Room only for one more man. 
You are standing on the deck beside the captain. Who 
shall it be ? You or the captain ? The captain says : 
"You." You jump and are saved. He stands there 
and dies. Now, you believe Capt. Braveheart sacri- 
ficed himself for his passengers, but you believe it with 
love, with tears, with hot and long continued exclama- 
tions, with grief at his loss and with joy at your de- 
liverance. That is saving faith. In other words, what 
you believe with all the heart, and believe in regard to 
yourself. On this hinge turns my sermon ; aye, the sal- 
vation of your immortal soul. 

You often go across a bridge you know nothing 
about. You do not know who built the bridge, you do 
not know what material it is made of, but you come to 
it, and walk over it, and ask no questions. And here is 
an arched bridge, blasted from the "Rock of Ages" 
and built by the architect of the whole universe, span- 
ning the dark gulf between sin and righteousness, and 
all God asks you is to walk across it, and you start, 
and you come to it, and you go a little way on, and 
you stop, and you fall back, and you experiment. You 



176 talmage's sermons. 

say : " How do I know that bridge will hold me ? " in- 
stead of marching on with firm step, asking no ques- 
tions, but feeling that the strength of the eternal God 
is under you. 

Oh, was there ever a prize offered so cheap as pardon 
and heaven are offered to you ? For how much ? A 
million dollars? It is certainly worth more than that. 
But cheaper than that you can have it. Ten thousand 
dollars? Less than that. Five thousand dollars? 
Less than that. One dollar? Less than that. One 
farthing? Less than that. "Without money and 
without price." No money to pay. No journey to 
take. No penance to suffer. Only just one decisive ac- 
tion of the soul : " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and 
thou shaltbe saved." 

A HAPPY LIFE. 
Shall I try to tell you what it is to be saved ? I can 
not tell you. No man, no angel, can tell you. But I 
can hint at it. For my text brings me up to this point: 
"Thoushalt be saved." It means a happy life here, 
and a peaceful death and a blissful eternity. It is a 
grand thing to go to sleep at night, and to get up in 
the morning, and to do business all day, feeling that all 
is right between my heart and God. No accident, no 
sickness,, no persecution, no peril, no sword can do me 
any permanent damage. I am a forgiven child of God, 
and he is bound to see me through. He has sworn he 
will see me through. The mountains may depart, the 
earth may burn, the light of the stars may be blown 
out by the blast of the judgment hurricane, but life and 
death, things present and things to come are mine. 

A PEACEFUL DEATH. 
Yea, farther than that— it means a peaceful death. 



SALVATION BY FAITH. 177 

Mrs. Hemans, Mrs. Sigourney, Dr. Young, and almost 
all the poets have said handsome things about death. 
There is nothing beautiful about it. When we standby 
the white and rigid features of those whom we love 
and they give no answering pressure of the hand and 
no returning kiss of the lip, we do not want anybody 
poetizing around about us. Death is loathsomeness 
and midnight and the wringing of the heart until the 
tendrils snap and curl in the torture unless Christ be 
with us. I confess to you of an infinite fear, a consum- 
ing horror of death unless Christ shall be with me. I 
would rather go down into a cave of wild beasts or a 
jungle of reptiles tlmn into the grave unless Christ goes 
with me. Will you tell me that I am to be carried out 
from my bright home and put away in the darkness ? 
I cannot bear darkness. At the first coming of the 
evening I must have the gas lit, and the further on in 
life I get the more I like to have my friends around me. 
And am I to be put off for thousands of years in a 
dark place, with no one to speak to ? When the holi- 
days come and the gifts are distributed shall I add no 
joy to the "Merry Christmas " or the " Happy New 
Year?" Ah, do not point down to the hole in the 
ground, the grave, and call it a beautiful place; un- 
less there be some supernatural illumination. I shud- 
der back from it. My whole nature revolts at it. 

But now this glorious lamp is lifted above the grave 
and all the darkness is gone and the way is clear. I 
look into it now without a single shudder. Now my 
anxiety is not about death; my anxiety is that I may 
live aright, for I know that if my life is consistent when 
I come to the last hour, and this voice is silent, and 
these eyes are closed, and these hands with which I beg 
for your eternal salvation to-day are folded over the 



178 talmage's sermons. 

still heart, that then I shall only begin to live. What 
power is there in anything to chill me in the last hour 
if Christ wraps around me the skirt of his own gar- 
ment? What darkness can fall upon my eyelids then, 
amid the heavenly daybreak? O death, I will not fear 
thee then! Back to thy cavern of darkness, thou rob- 
ber of all the earth. Fly, thou despoiler of families. 
With this battle-ax I hew thee in twain from helmet to 
sandal, the voice of Christ sounding all over the earth, 
and through the heavens : ' ' death , I will be thy plague. 

grave, I will be thy destruction." 

A BLISSFUL ETERNITY. 
To be saved is to wake up in the presence of Christ. 
You know when Jesus was on earth how happy he made 
every house he went into, and when he brings us up to 
his house how great our glee. His voice has more music 
in it than is to be heard in all the oratorios of eternity. 
Talk not about banks dasked with efflorescence. Jesus 
is the chief bloom of heaven. We shall see the very face 
that beamed sympathy in Bethany and take the very 
hand that dropped its blood from the short beam of the 
the cross. Oh, I want to stand in eternity with him. 
Toward that harbor I steer. Toward that goal I run. 

1 shall be satisfied when I awake in his likeness. Oh, 
broken-hearted men and women, how sweet it will be 
in that good land to pour all your hardships, and be- 
reavements and losses, into the loving ear of Christ, 
and then have him explain why it was best for you to 
be sick, and why it was best for you to be widowed, 
and why it was best for you to be persecuted, and why 
it was best for you to be tried, and have him point to 
an elevation proportionate to your disquietude here, 
saying: "You suffered with me on earth, come up now 
and be glorified with me in heaven." 



SALVATION BY FAITH. 179 

A MOTHERS STORY. 

Some one went into a house where there had been a 
good deal of trouble and said to the woman there: 
"You seem to be lonely. " "Yes," she said, "I am lone- 
ly." "How many in family?" "Only myself." "Have 
you had any children?" "I had seven children." "Where 
are they?" "Gone." "All gone?" "All." "All dead?" 
Then she breathed a long sigh into the loneliness, and 
said: "Oh, sir, Ihave been a good mother to the grave." 
And so there are hearts here that are utterly broken 
down by the bereavements of life. I point you today 
to the eternal balm of heaven. Are there any here that 
I am missing this morning? Ohyougoodwaiting-maid! 
your heart's sorrow poured in no human ear, lonely 
and sad! how glad you will be when Christ shall dis- 
band all your sorrows and crown you queen unto God 
and the lamb forever! O aged men and women, fed b} T 
his love and warmed by his grace for three-score years 
and ten! will not your decrepitude change for the leap 
of a hart when you come to look face to face upon 
him whom, having not seen, you love? Oh, that will 
be the good shepherd, not out in the night and watch- 
ing to keep off the wolves > but with the lambs reclining 
on the sunlit hill! That will be the captain of our sal- 
vation, not amid the roar, and crash, and boom of bat- 
tle, but amid the disbanded troop keeping victorious 
festivity. That will be the bridegroom of the church 
coming from the altar, the bride leaning upon his arm 
while he looks down into her face and says: "Behold, 
thou art fair, my love! Behold, thou art fair!" 




;; ';■:■?:. :;;;:'.: '.;, . .;: , ' : 



IN QUEENSTOWN, IRELAND. 




""For of siieh in the Kingdom of Heaven.'' 

THE NME OF JESUS. 

[Delivered at Queenstown, Ireland, Jan., 29th, 1890.] 
4i A name which is above every name." Philippians, ii, 9. 

A GOOD NAME. 

MY way from the Holy land, and while I wait 
for the steamer to resume her voyage to America, 
S^e> I preach to you from this text, which was one of 
Paul's rapturous and enthusiastic descriptions of the 
name of Jesus. By common proverb we have come to 
believe that there is nothing in a name, and so parents 
sometimes present their children for baptism regardless 
of the title given them, and not thinking that that partic- 
ular title will be either a hindrance or a help. Strange 
(181) 




182 talmage's sermons. 

mistake. You have no right to give to your child a 
name that is lacking either in euphony or in moral 
meaning. It is a sin for you to call your child Jehoia- 
kims or Tiglath-Pileser. Because you yourself ma}' 
have an exasperating name is no reason why you should 
give it to those who come after you. But how often 
we have seen some name, filled with jargon, rattling 
down from generation to generation, simply because 
some one a long while ago happened to be afflicted with 
it Institutions and enterprises have sometimes with- 
out sufficient deliberation taken their nomenclature. 
Mighty destinies have been decided by the significance 
of a name. There are men who all their life long toil 
and tussle to get over the influence of some unfortunate 
name. While we may, through right behavior and 
Christian demeanor, outlive the fact that we were bap- 
tized by the name of a despot, or an infidel, or a cheat, 
how much better it would have been if we all could 
have started life without any such incumbrance. When 
I find the apostle, in my text and in other parts of his 
writing, breaking out in dsecriptions of admiration in 
regard to the name of Jesus, I want to inquire what 
are some of the characteristics of that appellation. And 
that the Saviour himself, while I speak, might fill me 
with his own presence, for we never can tell to others 
that which we have not ourselves felt. 

AN EASY NAME. * 
First, this name of Jesus is an easy name. Sometimes 
we are introduced to people whose name is so long and 
unpronounceable that we have sharply to listen, and 
to hear the name given to us two or three times, be- 
fore we venture to speak it. But within the first two 
years the little child clasps its hands, and looks up, and 
says "Jesus." Can it be, amid all the families represent- 



THE NAME OF JESUS. 183 

ed here today, there is one household where the little 
ones speak of "father," and "mother," and "brother," 
and "sister," and not of "the name which is above every 
name?" Sometimes we forget the titles of our best 
friends, and we have to pause and think before we can 
recall the name. But can you imagine any freak of 
intellect in which 3 t ou could forget the Saviour's desig- 
nation? That word "Jesus" seems to fit the tongue in 
every dialect. When the voice in old age gets feeble 
and tremulous, and indistinct, still this regal word 
has potent utterance. 

Jesus, I love Tlry charming name, 

Tis music to my ear; 
Fain would I sound it out so loud 

That heaven and earth might hear. 

A BEAUTIFUL NAME. 

Still further, I remark it is a beautiful name. You 
have noticed that it is impossible to disassociate a name 
from the person who has the name. So there are names 
that are to me repulsive — I do not want to hear them 
at all — while those very names are attractive to you. 
Why the difference? It is because I happen to know 
persons by those names who are cross, and sour, and 
snappish, and queer, while the persons you used to 
know by those names were pleasant and attractive. 
As we cannot dissociate a name from the person who 
holds the name, that consideration makes Christ's name 
so unspeakably beautiful. No sooner is it pronounced 
in your presence than you think of Bethlehem, and 
Gethsemane, and Golgotha, and you see the loving face, 
and hear the tender voice, and feel the gentle touch. 
You see Jesus, the one who, though banquetting with 
heavenly hierarches, came down to breakfast on the 
fish that rough men had just hauled out of Genessaret; 



184 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

Jesus, the one who, though the clouds are the dust of 
his feet, walked footsore on to the road to Emmaus. 

Just as soon as that name is pronounced in your 
presence you think of how the shining one gave back 
the centurion's daughter, and how he helped the blind 
man to the sunlight, and how he made the cripple's 
crutches useless, and how he looked down into the 
babe's laughing eyes, and, as the little one struggled to 
go to him, flung out his arms around it, and impressed 
a loving kiss on its brow, and said: "Ofsuchisthe 
kingdom of heaven." Beautiful name— Jesus! It stands 
for love, for patience, for kindness, for forbearance, for 
self sacrifice, for magnanimity. It is aromatic with all 
odors and accordant with all harmonies. Sometimes 
I see that name, and the letters seem to be made out of 
tears, and then again they look like gleaming crowns. 
Sometimes they seem to as though twisted out of the 
straw on which he lay, and then as though built out 
of the thrones on which his people shall reign. Some- 
times I sound that word " Jesus," and I hear coming 
through the two syllables the sigh of Gethsemane and 
the groan of Calvary; and again I sound it, and it is 
all a-ripple with gladness and a-ring with hosanna. 
Take all the glories of book bindery and put them 
around the page where that name is printed. On Christ- 
mas morning wreathe it on the wall. 

Let it drip from the harp's strings and thunder out in 
organ's diapasom. Sound it often, sound it well, until 
every star shall seem to shine it, and every flower shall 
seem to breathe it, and mountain and sea, and day and 
night, and earth and heaven acclaim in full chant: 
"Blessed be his glorious name forever; The name that 
is above every mame." 

Jesus, the name high over all, 
In heaven and earth and skv. 



186 talmage's sermons. 

To the repenting soul, to the exhausted invalid, to the 
to the Sunday school girl, to the snow white octogen- 
arian, it is beautiful. The old man comes in from a 
long walk, and tremblingly opens the door, and hangs 
his hat on the old nail, and sets his cane in the usual 
corner, and lies down on a couch, and says to his chil- 
dren and grandchildren: "My dears, I am going to 
leave you," They say: "Why, where are you going, 
grandfather?" "I am going to Jesus." And so the 
old man faints away into heaven. The little child 
comes in from play and throws herself on your lap, and 
says; "Mamma, I am so sick, I am so sick." And you 
put her to bed, and the fever is worse and worse, until 
in some midnight she looks up into your face and says; 
"Mamma, kiss me good-by, I am going away from you." 
And you say: "My dear, where are you going to?" 
And she says: "I am going to Jesus." And the red 
cheeks which you thought was the mark of the fever, 
only tnrns out to be the carnation bloom of heaven. 
Oh yes; it is a sweet name spoken by the lips of child- 
hood, spoken by the old man. 

A MIGHTY NAME. 

Still further it is a mighty name. Rothchildis a potent 
name in the commercial world, Cuvier in the scientific* 
Irving a powerful name in the literary world, Washing- 
ton an influential name in the political world Welling- 
ton a mighty name in the military world, but tell me 
any name in all the earth so potent to awe, and lift, 
and thrill, and rouse, and agitate, and bless, as this 
name of Jesus. That one word unhorsed Saul, and 
flung Newton on his face on ship's deck, and today 
holds 400,000,000 of the race with omnipotent spell. 
That name in England today means more than Victoria: 
in Germany, means more than Emperor William; in 



THE NAME OF JESUS. 187 

France, means more than Carnot; in Italy, means 
more than Hubert of the present or Garibaldi of the 
past. I have seen a man bound hand foot in sin, satan 
his hard task master, in a bondage from which no human 
power could deliver him, and yet at the pronunciation 
of that one word he dashed down his chains and marched 
out forever free. I have seen a man overwhelmed 
with disaster, the last hope fled, the last light gone out; 
that name pronounced in his hearing, the sea dropped, 
the clouds scattered, and a sunburst of eternal gladness 
poured into his soul. I have seen a man hardened in 
infidelit^r, defiant of God, full of scoff and jeer, jocose of 
the judgment, reckless of an unending eternity, at the 
mere pronunciation of that namd blanch, and cower, 
and quake, and pray, and sob, and moan, and believe, 
and rejoice. 

Oh, it is a mighty name! At its utterance the last 
wall of sin will fall, the last temple of superstition crum- 
ble, the last juggernaut of cruelty crash to pieces. 
That name will first make all the earth tremble, and 
then it will make all the nations sing. It is to be the 
password of every gate of honor, the insignia on every 
flag, the shout in every conflict. All the millions of 
the earth are to know it. The red horse of carnage 
seen in apoc alyptic vision and the black horse of death, 
are to fall back on their haunches, and the white horse 
of victory will go forth, mounted by him who hath 
the moon under his feet, and the stars of heaven for 
his tiara. Other dominions seem to be giving out; this 
seems to be enlarging. Spain has had to give up much of 
her dominion. Austria has been wonderfully depleted in 
powder. France has had to surrender some of her favor- 
ite provinces. Most of the thrones of the world are being 
lowered, and most of the sceptres of the world are be- 
ing shortened; but every Bible printed, every tract dis- 



188 talmage's sermons. 

tributed, every Sunday school class taught, every 
school founded, every church established, is extending 
the power of Christ's name. That name has hardly 
been spoken under the Chinese wall, and in Siberian 
snow castle, in Brazilian grove and in eastern pagoda. 
That name is to swallow up all other names. That 
crown is to cover up all other crowns. That empire is 
to absorb all other dominations. 

All crimes shall cease, and ancient frauds shall fail, 

Returning justice lift aloft her scale; 

Peace o'er the world her olive wand extend, 

And white robed innocence from heaven descend. 

AN ENDURING NAME. 

Still further: it is an enduring name. You clamber 
over the fence of the graveyard and pull aside the 
weeds, and you see the faded inscription on the tomb- 
stone. That was the name of a man who once ruled 
all that town. The mightiest names of the world have 
either perished or are perishing. Gregory VI, Sancho 
of Spain, Conrad I, of Germany, Richard I, of England, 
Louis XVI, of France, Catharine of Russia— mighty 
names once, that made the world tremble; but now, 
none so poor as to do them reverence, and to the great 
mass of people they mean absolutely nothing; they 
never heard of them. But the name of Christ is to 
endure forever. 

It will be perpetuated in art, for there will be other 
Bellinis to depict the Madonna; there will be other 
Ghirlandaios to represent Christ's baptism; there will be 
other Bronzinos to show us Christ visiting the spirits 
in prison; other Giottos to appall our sight with the 
crucifixion. 

The name will be preserved in song, for there will be 
other Alexander Popes to write the " Messiah," other 
Dr. Youngs to portray his triumph,. other Cowpers to 



THE NAME OF JESUS. 189 

sing his love. It will be preserved in costly and magni- 
ficent architecture, for, Protestantism as well as Catho- 
licism is yet to have its St. Marks and its St. Peters. 

That name will be preserved in the literature of the 
world, for already it is embalmed in the best books, 
and there will be other Dr. Paleys to write the "evi- 
dences of Christianity," and other Richard Baxters to 
describe the Saviour's coming to judgment. 

But above all, and more than all, that name will be 
embalmed in the memory of all the good of earth and 
all the great ones of heaven. Will the delivered bond- 
man of earth ever forget who freed him? Will the 
blind man of earth forget who gave him sight? Will 
the outcast of earth forget who brought him home? 
No! No! 

To destroy the memory of that name of Christ, you 
would have to burn up all the Bibles and all the church- 
es on earth, and then in a spirit of universal arson go 
through the gate of heaven, and put a torch to the 
temples and the towers and the palaces, and after all 
that city was wrapped in awful conflagration, and the 
citizens came out and gazed on the ruin — even then, 
they would hear that name in the thunder of falling 
tower and the crash of crumbling wall, and see it in- 
wrought in the flying banners of flame, and the redeem- 
ed of the Lord on high would be happy yet and cry out : 
"Let the palaces and temples burn, we have Jesus left!" 
"Blessed be his glorious name for ever and ever. The 
name that is above every name." 

WHAT NAME WILL YOU CALL CHRIST. 

Have you ever made up your mind by what name 
you will call Christ when you meet him in heaven? 
You know he has many names. Will you call him 
Jesus, or the Annointed One, or the Messiah, or will 



190 talmage's sermons. 

you take some of the symbolical names which on earth 
you learned from your Bible? 

Wandering some day in the garden of God on high, 
the place a-bloom with eternal springtide, infinite, lux- 
uriance of rose, and lily, and amaranth, you may look 
up into his face and say: "My Lord, thou art the rose 
of Sharon and the lily of the valley." 

Some day, as a soul comes up from earth to take its 
place in the firmament, and shine as a star for ever and 
ever, and the luster of a useful life shall beam forth 
tremulous and beautiful, you may look up into the face 
of Christ and say: "My Lord, thou art a brighter star 
— the morning star — a star forever." 

Wandering some day amid the fountains of life that 
toss in the sunlight and fall in crash of peal and ame- 
thyst in golden and crystaline urn, and you wander up 
the round banked river to where it first tingles its silver 
on the rock, and out of the chalices of love you drink to 
honor and everlasting joy, you may look up into the 
face of Christ and say: "My Lord, thou art the foun- 
tain of living water . ' ' 

Some day, wandering amid the lambs and sheep in 
the heavenly pastures, feeding by the rock, rejoicing 
jn the presence of him who brought you out of the wol- 
fish wilderness to the sheepfold above, you may look up 
into his loving and watchful eye and say: "My Lord, 
thou art the shepherd of the everlasting hills." 

But there is another name you may select. T will 
imagine that heaven is done. Every throne has its 
king. Every harp has its harper. Heaven has gather- 
ed up everything that is worth having. The treasures 
of the whole universe have poured into it. The song 
full. The ranks full. The mansions full. Heaven full. 
The sun shall set afire with splendor the domes of the. 
temples and burnish the golden streets into a blaze 



192 talmage's sermons. 

and be reflected back from the solid pearl of the twelve 
gates and it shall be noon in heaven, noon on the river, 
noon on the hills noon in all the valleys — high noon. 
Then the soul may look up gradually accustoming itself 
to the vision, shading the eyes as from the almost in- 
sufferable splendor of the noonday light, until the vision 
can endure it, then crying out: "Thou art the sun that 
never sets! 

At this point I am staggered with the thought that 
notwithstanding all the charm in the name of Jesus, 
and the fact that it is so easy a name, and so beautiful 
a name, and so potent a name, and so enduring a name, 
there are people who find no charm in those two 
syllables. 

O COME THIS DAY TO CHRIST. 

O come this day and see whether there is anything in 
Jesus. I challenge those of you who are farther from 
God to come at the close of this service and test with 
me whether God is good, and Christ is gracious, and 
the Holy Spirit is omnipotent. I challenge you to come 
and kneel down with me at the altar of mercy. I will 
kneel on one side of the altar and you kneel on the other 
side of it, and neither of us will rise until our sins are 
forgiven, and we ascribe, in the words of the text, all 
honor to the name of Jesus — you pronouncing it, I pro- 
nouncing it — the name that is above every name. 

His worth if all the nations knew, 
Sure the whole earth would love him too. 
O that God today, by the power of his holy spirit,, 
would roll over you a vision of that blessed Christ, and 
you would begin to weep and pray and believe and re- 
joice. You have heard of the warrior who went out to 
fight against Christ. He knew he was in the wrong, 
while waging the war against the kingdom of Christ; 



THE NAME OF JESUS. 193 

an arrow struck him and he fell. It pierced him in the 
heart, and lying there, his face to the sun, his life blood 
running away, he caught a handful of the blood that 
was rushing out in his right hand, and held it up before 
the sun and cried out: "0 Jesus thou hast conquered!" 
And if today the arrow of God's spirit piercing your 
soul, you felt the truth of what I have been trying to 
proclaim, you would surrender now and forever to the 
Lord who bought you. Glorious name! I know not 
whether you will accept it or not; but I will tell you 
one thing here and now, in the presence of angels and 
men, I take him to be my Lord, my God, my pardon' 
my peace, my life, my joy, my salvation, my heaven. 
4 'Blessed be his glorious name forever. The name that is 
above every name . " ' ' Halleluj ah ! unto him that sitteth 
upon the throne and unto the lamb forever and ever! 
Amen and amen and amen." 




HOME AGAIN. 




THE HOUSE ON THE WfflLL. 

[Delivered in Brooklyn, N. Y., February, 9th., 1890.] 
"And the young men that were spies, went in and brought out 
Rahab, and her father, and her mother, and her brethren, and all 
that she had." Joshua, vi, 23. 

..^HEN, only a few weeks ago, I visited Jericho, I 
h said, can it be possible that this dilapidated 
^fW place is the Jericho that Mark Antony gave 
as a wedding present to Cleopatra? Where are the 
groves of palm trees? Where are Herod's palaces which 
once stood here? Where is the great theatre from the 
stage of which Salome told the people that Herod was 
dead? Where is the sycamore tree on the limb of which 
Zaccheus sat when Jesus passed this place? Where is 
the wreck of the walls that fell at the blowing of the 
rams' horns? But the fact that all these have dis- 
appeared did not hinder me from seeing in imagination 
the smash of everything on that fated day, save one 
(195) 



196 talmage's sermons. 

house on the wall. The scene centuries ago comes back 
to me as though it were yesterday. 
A SAD HOUSE. 

There is a very sick and sad house in the city of Jeri- 
cho. What is the matter? Is it poverty? No. Worse 
than that. Is it leprosy? No. Worse than that. Is 
it death? No. Worse than that. A daughter has 
forsaken her home. By what infernal plot she was 
induced to leave I know not; but they look in vain for 
her return. Sometimes they hear a footstep very much 
like hers' and they start up and say: "She comes!" but 
only to sink back again into disappointment. Alas! 
Alas! The father sits by the hour, with his face in his 
hands, saying not one word. The mother's hair is be- 
coming gray too fast, and she begins to stoop so that 
those who saw her only a little while ago in the street 
know her not now as she passes. The brothers clench 
their fists, swearing vengeance against the despoiler of 
their home. Alas! will the poor soul never come back? 
There is a long, deep shadow over all the household. 
Added to this there is an invading army six miles away, 
just over the river, coming on to destroy the city; and 
what with the loss of their child and the coming on oi 
that destructive army, I think the old people wished 
that they could die. That is the first scene in this drama 
of the Bible. 

TWO SPIES. 

In a house on the wall of the city is that daughter. 
That is her home now. Two spies have come from the 
invading army to look around through Jericho and see 
how best it may be taken. Yonder is the lost child, in 
that dwelling on the wall of the city. The police hear 
of it, and soon there is the shuffling of feet all around 
about the door, and the city government demands the 



THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 197 

surrender of those two spies. First, Rahab — for that 
was the name of the lost child — First, Rahab secretes 
the two spies and gets their pursuers off the track, but 
after awhile she says to them: "I will make a bargain 
with you. I will save your life if you will save my life, 
and the life of my father and my mother, and my broth- 
ers, and my sisters, when the victorious army comes 
upon the city." 0, she had not forgotten her home yet, 
you see. The wanderer never forgets home. Her heart 
breaks now as she thinks of how she has maltreated 
her parents, and she wishes she were back with them 
again, and she wishes she could get away from her sin- 
ful enthrallment; and sometimes she looks up in the face 
of the midnight, bursting into agonizing tears. No 
sooner have these two spies promised to save her life, 
and the life of her father, and mother, and brothers, 
and sisters, than Rahab takes a scarlet cord and ties it 
around the body of one of the spies, brings him to the 
window, and as he clambers out — nervous lest she have 
not strength to hold him — with muscular arms such as 
as woman seldom has, she lets him down, hand over 
hand, in safety to the ground. Not being exhausted, 
she ties the cord around the other spy, brings him to 
the window, and just as successfully lets him down to 
the ground. No sooner have these men untied the scar- 
let cord from their bodies than they look up, and they 
say: "You had better get all your friends in this house 
— your father, your mother, your brothers and your 
sisters; you had better get them in this house. And 
then, after you have them here, take this red cord 
which you have put around our bodies and tie it across 
the window, and when our victorious army comes up, 
and sees that scarlet thread in the window, they will 
spare this house and all who are in it. Shall it be so?" 



198 talmage's sermons. 

cried the spies. "Aye, aye," said Rahab, from the win- 
dow, "it shall be so." That is the second scene in this 
Bible drama. 

FLY! FLY! 

There is a knock at the door of the old man. He 
looks up and says: "Come in," and lo! there is Rahab, 
the lost child; but she has no time to talk. They gather 
in excitement around her, and she says to them: "Get 
ready quickly, and go with me to my house. The army 
iscoming! Thetrumpet! Makehaste! Fly! Theenemy"! 
That is the third scene in this Bible drama. 

The hosts of Israel are all around about the doomed 
city of Jericho. Crash goes the great metropolis, heaps 
on heaps. The air suffocating with the dust, and hor- 
rible with the screams of a dying city. All the houses 
flat down. All the people dead. Ah no, no. On a crag 
of the wall— the only piece of the wall left standing- 
there is a house which we must enter. There is a family 
there that have been spared. Who are they? Let us 
go and see. Rahab, her father, her mother, her broth- 
ers, her sisters, all safe, and the only house left stand- 
ing in all the city. What saved them? Was the house 
more firmly built? Oh, no; it was built in the most 
perilous place— on the wall; and the wall was the first 
thing that fell. Was it because her character was any 
better than any of the other population of the city? 
0, no. Why, then, was she spared and all her house- 
hold? Can you tell me why? 0, it was the scarlet line 
in the window. That is the fourth scene in this Bible 
drama. 

THE SCARLET THREAD. 

When the destroying angel went through Egypt it 
was the blood of the lamb on the door posts that saved 
the Israelites; and now that vengeance has come upon 



200 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

Jericho it is the same color that assures the safety of 
Rahab and all her household. My friends, there are foes 
coming upon us, more deadly and more tremendous, to 
overthrow our immortal interests. They will trample 
us down and crush us out forever, unless there be some 
skillful mode of rescue open. The police of death already 
begin to clamor for our surrender; but, blessed be God, 
there is a way out. It is through the window, and by 
a rope so saturated with the blood of the cross . that it 
is as red as that with which the spies were lowered; 
and if once our souls are delivered, then the scarlet cord 
stretched across the window of our escape, we may 
defy all bombardment, earthly and satanic. 
STRETCH THIS SCARLET CORD. 

In the first place, carrying out the idea of my text, we 
must stretch this scarlet cord across the window of 
rescue. There comes a time when a man is surrounded. 
What is that in the front door of his soul? Itisthethreat- 
enings of the future. What is that in the back door of 
the soul? It is the sins of the past. He cannot get out 
of either of those doorways. If he attempts it he will 
be cut to pieces. What shall he do? Escape through 
the window of God's mercy. That sunshine has been 
pouring in for many a day. God's inviting mercy. 
God's pardoning mercy. God's all conquering mercy. 
God's everlasting mercy. But you say the window is 
so high. Ah, there is a rope, the very one with which 
the cross and its victim were lifted. That was strong 
enough to hold Christ, and it is strong enough to hold 
you. Bear all your weight upon it, all your hopes for 
this life, all your hopes for the life that is to come. Es- 
cape now through the window. 

"But," you say, "that cord is too small to save me; 
that salvation will never do at all for such a sinner as 



THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 201 

I have been." I suppose that the rope with which 
Rahab let the two spies to the ground was not thick 
enough: but they took that or nothing. Ad, my dear 
brother, that is your alternative. There is only one 
scarlet line that can save you. There have been hun- 
dreds and thousandswho have been borne away in safe- 
ty by that scarlet line, and it will bear you away in 
safety. Do you notice what a very narrow escape 
those two spies had? I suppose they came with flus- 
tered cheek and with excited heart. They had a very nar- 
row escape. They went in the broad door of sin; but how 
did they come out? They came out of the window. 
They went up by the stairs of stone; they came down 
on a slender thread. And so, my friends, we go easily 
and unabashedly into sin, and all the doors are open; 
but if we get out at all it will be by being let down over 
precipices, wriggling and helpless, the strong grip above 
keeping us from being dashed on the rocks beneath. 
It is easy to get into sin, young man. It is not so easy 
to get out of it. 

THE FIRST STEP. 
A young man goes to the marble counter of a hotel. 
He asks for a brandy smash — called so, I suppose, be- 
cause it smashes the man that takes it. There is no 
intoxication in it. As the young man receives it he 
does not seem to be at all excited. It does not give 
any glossiness to the eye. He walks home in beautiful 
apparel, and all his prospects are brilliant. That 
drink is not going to destroy him, but it is the first 
step on a bad road. Years have passed on, and I see 
that young man after he has gone the whole length of 
dissipation. It is midnight, and he is in a hotel — perhaps 
the very one where he took the first drink. A deli- 
rium is on him. He rises from the bed and comes to 



202 taumage's sermons. 

the window, and it is easily lifted; so he lifts it. Then he 
pushes back the blinds and puts his foot on the win- 
dow-sill. Then he gives one spring, and the watch- 
man finds his disfigured body, unrecognizable, on the 
pavement. O, if he had only waited a little while— if 
he had come down on the scarlet ladder that Jesus holds 
from the wall for him, and for you, and for me; but no, 
he made one jump, and was gone. 

A minister of Christ was not long ago dismissed from 
his diocese for intoxication, and in a public meeting he 
gave this account of his sorrow; He said: "I had a 
beautiful home once; but strong drink shattered it. 
I had beautiful children; but this fiend of rum took their 
dimpled hands in his and led them to the grave. I had 
a wife — to know her was to love her; but she sits in 
wretchedness to-night, while I wander over the earth. 
I had a mother, and the pride of her life was I; but the 
thunderbolt struck her. I now have scarcely a friend 
in the world. Taste of the bitter cup I have tasted, and 
then answer me as to whether I have any hatred for the 
agency of my ruin. Hate it? I hate the whole damn- 
ing traffic. I would to God to-night that every distill- 
ery was in flames, for then in the glowing sky I would 
write in the smoke of the ruin: "Woe to him that put- 
teth the bottle to his neighbor's lips!" That minister 
of the gospel went in through the broad door of temp- 
tation; he came out of the window. And when I see 
the temptations that are about us in all countries, and 
whenlknow the proclivities to sin in every man's heart, 
I see that if any of us escape it will be a very narrow 
escape. 0, if we have, my friends, got off from our sin, 
let us tie the scarlet thread by which we have been sav- 
ed across the window. Let us do it in praise of him 
whose blood dyed it that color. Let it be in announce- 



THE HOUSE ON THL WALL. 203 

ment of the fact that we shall no more be fatally assault- 
ed. "There is now no condemnation to them that are 
in Jesus Christ." Then let all the forces of this world 
come up in cavalry charge, and let spirits of darkness 
come on — an infernal storming party attempting to 
take our soul — this rope twisted from these words. 
"The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," will 
hurl them back defeated forever. 

PROTECT YOUR HOUSEHOLD. 
Still further, we must take this red cord of the text 
and stretch it across the window of our households. 
When the Israelitish army came up against Jericho, they 
said: "What is that in the window?" Some one said: 
"That is a scarlet line." "Oh," said some one else, 
"that must be the house that was to be spared. Don't 
touch it." That line was thick enough, and long 
enough, and conspicuous enough to save Rahab, her 
father, her mother, her brothers and her sisters — the 
entire family. Have our households as good pro- 
tection? You have bolts on the front door and on the 
back, and fastenings to the window, and perhaps burg- 
lar alarms, and perhaps an especial watchman blow- 
ing his whistle at midnight before your dwelling; but 
all that cannot protect your household. Is there on 
our houses the sign of a Saviour's sacrifice and mercy? 
Is there a scarlet line in the window? Have your chil- 
dren been consecrated to Christ? Have you been wash- 
ed in the blood of the atonement? In what room do 
you have family prayers? Show me where it is you are 
accustomed to kneel. The sky is black with the com- 
ing deluge. Is your family inside or outside of the ark? 
It is a sad thing for a man to reject Christ: but to lie 
down and in the night of sin, across the path of heaven, 
so that his family come up and trip over him — that is 



204 talmage's sermons. 

terrific. It is a sad thing for a mother to reject Christ; 
but to gather her family around her, aud then take them 
by the hand and lead them out into the paths of world- 
liness, away from God and heaven, alas! alas! There 
may be geranium and cactus in that family window, 
and upholstery ho vering over it, and childish faces look- 
ing out of it, but there is no scarlet thread stretched 
across it. Although that house may seem to be on the 
best street in all the town or city, it is really on the 
edge of a marsh, across which sweep poisonous malarias 
and it has a sandy foundation, and its splendor will 
come down, and great will be the fall of it. A home 
without God! A prayerless father! An undevout 
mother! Awful! Awful! Is that you? Will you keep 
on, my brother, on the wrong road, and take your 
loved ones with you? Time is so short that we can- 
not waste any of it in apologies, or indirections, cir- 
cumlocutions. You owe to your children, O father, O 
mother, more than food, more than clothing, more than 
shelter — you owe them the example of a prayerful, con- 
secrated, pronounced, out and out Christian life. You 
cannot afford to keep it away from them. 
MY GOOD MOTHER. 
Now, as I stand here, you do not see any hand out- 
stretched towards me, and yet there are hands on both 
my shoulders. They are hands of parental benediction. 
It is quite a good many years ago now since we folded 
those hands as they began their last sleep on the banks of 
the Raritan, in the village cemetery; but those hands 
are stretched out towards me to-day, and they are 
just as warm and they are just as gentle as when I sat 
on her knee at five years of age. And I shall never shake 
off those hands. I do not want to. They have helped 
me so much a thousand times already, and I do not ex- 



THE HOUSE ON THE WALL. 205 

pect to have a trouble or a trial between this and my 
grave where those hands will not help me. It Was not 
a very splendid home, as the world calls it; but we had 
a family bible there, well worn by tender perusal; and 
there was a family altar there, where we knelt morning 
and night; and there was a holy Sabbath there; and 
stretched in a straight line or hung in loops or festoons 
there was a scarlet line in the window. O, the tender, 
precious, blessed memory of a Christian home! Is that 
the impression you are making upon your children? 
When you are dead — and it will not be long before you 
are — when you are dead, will your child say: "If there 
ever was a good Christian father, mine was one. If 
there ever was a good Christian mother, mine was one?" 

Still further: We want this scarlet line of the text 
drawn across the window of our prospects. I seeRahab 
and father, and her mother, and her brothers, and her 
sisters looking out over Jericho, the city of palm-trees, 
and across the river, and over at the army invading, 
and then up to the mountains and the sky. Mind you, 
this house was on the wall, and I suppose the prospect 
from the window must have been very wide. Besides 
that, I do not think that the scarlet line at all interfered 
with the view of the landscape. The assurance it gave 
of safety must have added to the beauty of the country. 
To-day, my friends, we sit in the window of earthly 
prospects, and we look off towards the hills of heaven 
and the landscape of eternal beauty. God has opened 
the window for us, and we look out. We only get a 
dim outline of the inhabitants. We now only here and 
there catch a note of the exquisite harmony. 

THE SCARLET LINE AT THE WINDOW. 

But blessed be God for this scarlet line in the window. 
That tells me that the blood of Christ bought that home, 



206 TALMAGE'S SERMONS. 

for my soul, and I shall go there when my work is done 
And as I put my hand on that scarlet line, every-thing in 
the future brightens. My eyesight gets better, and the 
robes of the victors are more lustrous, and our loved 
ones who went away some time ago — they do not stand 
any more with their backs to us, but their faces are 
this way and their voices drop through this Sabbath 
air, saying with all tenderness and sweetness, "Come! 
Come! Come!" And the child that you think of only as 
buried — why, there she is, and it is May day in heaven; 
and they gather the amaranth, and they pluck the 
lilies, and they twist then into a garland for her brow, 
and she is one of the May queens of heaven. O, do you 
think they could see our waving to-day? 

It is quite a pleasant day, pretty clear and, not many 
clouds in the sky. I wonder if they can see us from 
that good land? I think they can. If from this win- 
dow of earthly prospects we can almost see them, then 
from their towers of light I think they can fully see us. 
And so I wave them the glory, and I wave them the 
joy, and I say: "Have you got through with all your 
troubles?' ' And their voices answer: "God hath wiped 
away all tears from our eyes." I say: "Is it as grand 
up there as you thought it would be?" And the voice 
answers: "Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither 
hath it entered into the heart of man, the things which 
God hath prepared for those that love him" I say: 
"Do you have any more struggle for bread?" and they 
answer: "We hunger no more, we thirst no more." 
And I say: "Have you been out to the cemetery of the 
golden city?" and they answer: "There is no death 
here." And I look out through the heavens, and say: 
"Where do you get your light from nights, and what 
do you burn in the temple?" and they answer: "There 



208 talmage's sermons. 

is no night here, and we have no need of candle or of 
star." And I say: "What book do you sing out of?" 
and they answer: "The Hallelujah Chorus." And I 
say: "In the splendor and magnificence of the city, 
don't you ever get lost?" and they answer: "The 
Lamb which is in the midst of the throne leadeth us 
to living fountains of water." O how near they seem. 
Their wings— do you not feel them? Their harps— do 
you not hear them? And all that through the window 
of our earthly prospects, across which stretcheth the 
scarlet line. Be that my choice color forever. Is it too 
glaring for you? Do you like the blue because it reminds 
you of the sky, or the green because it makes you think 
of the foliage, or the black because it is in the shadows 
of the night? I take the scarlet because it shall make 
me think of the price that was paid for my soul. O the 
blood! the blood! the blood of the Lamb of God that 
taketh away the sin oft he world. 

I see where you are* You are at the cross roads. 
The next step decides everything. Pause before you 
take it; but do not pause too long. I hear the blast 
of the trumpet that wakes the dead. Look out! Look 
out! For in that day, and in our closing moment on 
earth, better than any other defense or barricade, how- 
ever high or broad or stupendous, will be one little, thin, 
scarlet thread in the window. 




